Unfortunately, sound bites don’t prevent crime, and the story is more complicated than either side wanted to admit. Chicago police, like their counterparts in New York and every other big city, have their own procedures for stopping certain people in certain communities and looking for guns, drugs, gang ties, or any other signs of criminality. The policies in Chicago may be less visibly flawed than New York’s, but they cause the same tensions between public safety and personal liberty.
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Chicago police make hundreds of thousands of stops each year, primarily in African-American and Hispanic neighborhoods. In most cases, they don’t find any evidence of a crime. But under police department rules, officers are required to keep a record of every interview or pat down they conduct that doesn’t yield an arrest. These so-called “contact cards” include the address and phone number of the person interviewed, as well as tattoos, gang affiliation, and a description of the reason for the stop. The information goes into a computer database that police use to track crime trends and who’s hanging out with whom.
Two other officers arrived at the scene and they placed the suspect under arrest. It took more than two hours to book him at the station. He was released early the next morning, and several weeks later he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor possession.
Police say officers here are trained to know they can only stop someone if they can explain their reasonable suspicion. Still, they’re also under tremendous pressure to fill out contact cards and make arrests, especially in high-crime areas. Some civil liberties advocates believe that, as in New York, many stops are made without a clear or credible reason.
