This article was crafted through a collaboration between Block Club Chicago, a non-profit newsroom dedicated to Chicago's communities, and Bolts, a non-profit publication focusing on criminal justice and voting rights in local governments.
It commenced with a traffic halt for an alleged seatbelt infringement. It escalated into a fatal confrontation in mere moments.
Since the unveiling of body camera footage depicting undercover police officers fatally shooting Dexter Reed in Chicago, family and activists have demanded answers regarding why the 26-year-old was stopped and how a routine traffic stop turned deadly, resulting in Reed's death, an officer injured, and nearly 100 shots fired in a residential area.
The vehicle stop is indicative of a trend increasingly concentrating on Black neighborhoods in recent times, deemed by activists as potentially infringing on individuals' rights. These traffic stops have been likened to "the new stop-and-frisk."
Moreover, they've been notably aggressive in Chicago's Western Sector, where Reed was stopped and killed. Activists have long cautioned that such stops can ignite volatile encounters.
In reality, police pull over more residents of Chicago in the Harrison (11th) Police District, where Reed was stopped, than in any other district in the city, as per a Block Club Chicago analysis of police data. Yet, the majority of these stops do not result in citations.
One-tenth of all traffic stops in Chicago took place in that district—averaging over 154 stops daily—despite the fact that the area only constitutes 3 percent of Chicago's population, according to a report by Impact for Equity. Approximately 96 percent of residents in the district are Black or Latino, as per the report.
"The approach ultimately creates a hazardous environment for all parties, rather than contributing to any enhancement of public safety in Chicago," remarked Amy Thompson, legal counsel for Impact for Equity. "Pretextual stops are generating danger, not detecting it."
She believes Reed's arrest exemplifies this peril. "Five officers swarmed out in plainclothes for a seat belt infraction. It was evidently an effort to fish for criminal activity," she noted.
Chicago's Civilian Office of Police Accountability, the oversight body responsible for investigating officer-involved shootings, expressed reservations about the rationale officers provided for stopping Reed. Investigators are uncertain about how officers could have observed Reed's lack of seat belt use given their positions and the tinted windows of Reed's SUV, wrote chief administrator Andrea Kersten in a letter to Police Superintendent Larry Snelling, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.
Newly unveiled records reveal that the officers implicated in the fatal shootout were under investigation for multiple other vehicle stops that drivers claimed were unjustified.
Chicago's Police Superintendent Larry Snelling, who assumed the role of the city's top law enforcement official last year, has acknowledged the issue surrounding the abundance of traffic stops. Departing from previous administrations, he has vowed to decrease the frequency of such stops. He has also committed to regularly educating officers to ensure they act based on "reasonable articulable suspicion or probable cause," he informed residents at a community meeting the day preceding the release of footage depicting Reed's demise.
"There have been persistent warnings that the significant surge in traffic stops would inevitably result in more violent confrontations due to the manner in which this strategy is being implemented. These stops have become so customary and so fruitless that it was inevitable we would witness a tragedy such as this," remarked Ed Yohnka, spokesperson for the Illinois ACLU. "The stops are executed in a manner where firearms are drawn, leading to an immediate escalation of tensions."
How stops surged after Chicago funneled more cops to traffic stops
Traffic stops in predominantly Black neighborhoods surged following a 2015 ACLU report that revealed stop-and-frisk encounters were often unfounded, disproportionately targeted Black and Latino Chicagoans, and routinely violated individuals' rights. After the city committed to reforming the practice, Chicago police shifted their focus to traffic stops, according to Yohnka.
The reported number of traffic stops by Chicago Police to state oversight bodies skyrocketed from less than 100,000 in 2015 to nearly 600,000 in 2019, as per the Illinois Traffic and Pedestrian Stop Study. While documented stops decreased during the initial years of the pandemic, in 2023, Chicago police recorded their second-highest tally of stops in two decades, according to the Impact for Equity report. The state report indicated that Black drivers are stopped up to seven times more frequently than white drivers. Moreover, there are minimal traffic stops in districts where many police officers reside, while officers disproportionately stop drivers in Black communities.
However, the study significantly underreports Chicago police traffic stops. A Block Club inquiry uncovered hundreds of thousands of unreported traffic stops annually by the department, contravening transparency laws aimed at addressing patterns of racial bias in police interactions.
Chicago police heavily rely on these encounters to search for illicit items such as illegal firearms and drugs, stopping and apprehending thousands more Black drivers than they disclose to oversight agencies, as per a Block Club investigation. Despite making millions of stops, officers discover firearms in fewer than one out of every 150 stops, according to findings by Block Club and Injustice Watch.
"It's evident that this type of stop has little to do with traffic safety. It's solely about attempting to uncover firearms and drugs," remarked Yohnka. "If your objective is to find a weapon, you approach that situation much differently than someone who merely failed to come to a complete stop at a sign."
Chicago police have redirected resources and personnel purportedly allocated for other public safety initiatives to conduct an increased number of traffic stops and escalate gun-related arrests, as revealed by Bolts and Block Club investigations.
The flagship project of David Brown, Snelling's predecessor, was a community policing unit ostensibly established to foster trust between residents of the South and West Sides and law enforcement, address local concerns, and address crime at its core. By 2021, it had become the largest unit within the department, boasting over 800 officers.
However, an examination of dispatch records by Bolts indicated that these officers seldom engaged in positive community interactions as intended. Instead, they were predominantly deployed on the South and West Sides as a mobile strike force and the primary enforcer of the expanding traffic stop initiative. The community policing team conducted more traffic stops and searches than any other police unit, accounting for nearly one-third of the extensive volume of traffic stops in 2021, data reveals.
Amid protests from oversight groups and legal challenges from both drivers and officers, who decried an allegedly unlawful quota system discriminating against Black Chicagoans, the community team was disbanded.
A continuing class action lawsuit filed by Black and Latino drivers and the ACLU alleges that the traffic stop strategy—particularly under Brown's community team—flooded Black neighborhoods with traffic stops as a pretext for unauthorized searches of drivers. The complaint references emails from then-Deputy Superintendent Ernest Cato III instructing commanders to "utilize traffic stops to address violence."
In 2021, a former lieutenant from the community team sued the city, alleging retaliation by leadership for refusing to mandate officers under his supervision to conduct a minimum of 10 stops daily. Despite the dissolution of the community team, Snelling reinstated it under a different name.
"Not every officer in those units engages with the community, conversing with residents and seeking solutions," remarked Yohnka. "Our clients recounted traffic stops where officers approached vehicles with their hands on their firearms. People are being singled out and targeted based on their race. It underscores the peril, inefficiency, and tragic consequences of these stops."
Furthermore, officers assigned to respond to 911 calls have been directed toward traffic stops, as uncovered by a Block Club inquiry.
According to police directives, hundreds of officers are tasked daily with rapid response duties, addressing high-priority 911 calls and reducing lengthy response times—a pressing issue for many communities. This measure is intended to allow beat officers to remain on local patrols and cultivate community ties instead of prioritizing emergency responses.
However, dispatch data indicates that rapid response officers rarely handle 911 calls. Instead, the majority are dedicated to conducting traffic stops, the data reveals.
"That's a significant deployment of personnel," noted community organizer Arewa Winters. "While myriad issues persist across various communities, pulling people over with little to no positive outcomes—Is that a judicious use of resources? Could those officers be deployed elsewhere, engaging in different activities?"
A promise to reduce traffic stops: ‘We have to unlearn old things’
Snelling, the inaugural superintendent appointed under a novel community oversight commission, has departed from prior leadership by committing to address the adverse effects of widespread traffic stops.
Former Superintendent Brown refuted claims of racially discriminatory stops and quotas and dismissed evidence suggesting stops were utilized to uncover cases of gun possession.
During an April community forum, Snelling acknowledged the role of traffic stops in the department's approach to addressing firearms, highlighting the department's reduction in traffic stops while concurrently increasing gun-related arrests. Snelling intends to further diminish traffic stops by providing officers with training in alternative strategies, he stated.
"We must retrain the officers and introduce them to new methods," remarked Snelling. "To facilitate their learning of new approaches, we must first help them discard outdated practices."
Snelling stated that Chicago police have conducted 46,000 fewer stops in 2024 compared to the initial quarter of the previous year. Police spokesperson Thomas Ahern declined to disclose the origin of this reduction in stops, stating that the statistic was derived from "computer data."
To address the persistent issues associated with traffic stops, Snelling pledged to subject traffic stops to the oversight of the federal consent decree, ensuring that the reductions "will endure long after my tenure," he emphasized.
However, many remain doubtful and call for the superintendent to take more immediate action. According to a recent report, only 6 percent of the requirements outlined in the consent decree have been fulfilled in the five years since its inception.
"Regardless of Snelling's perspective on traffic stops, in order for the community to have clarity regarding their interactions with law enforcement, and for the police to understand their boundaries, there must be a formal policy addressing these pretextual stops," remarked Thompson of Impact for Equity.
When the objective is to probe unrelated offenses, officers are inclined to escalate a traffic stop to conduct searches for illicit items rather than deescalate the situation, Winters noted. This strategy, prevalent in Black neighborhoods, places hundreds of thousands of Chicago residents in high-risk scenarios daily, situations that could turn fatal at any instant.
While investigators concluded that Reed fired at officers first, Winters stressed that focusing on who initiated the gunfire distracts from the larger issue: Neither the officers nor Reed faced a potentially lethal situation until police initiated the traffic stop.
"The dialogue must commence with examining the actions initiated by the police and their approach to that young man," she emphasized.
It mirrors the circumstances surrounding the killing of Philando Castile during a traffic stop near Minneapolis in 2016, Winters pointed out. Officers employed a broken taillight as grounds to stop Castile and investigate him for an unrelated armed robbery in the vicinity, as per an investigation. Within a minute of the encounter, officers opened fire on Castile while his girlfriend and her 4-year-old child were present in the vehicle.
In that same year, Winters' nephew Pierre Loury was fatally shot after officers pulled over a vehicle he was in to investigate a shooting earlier that day. Following an attempt to flee, an officer shot Loury as the teenager climbed a fence.
"I know numerous families who have lost loved ones to police. We're retraumatized, frustrated, angry, hurt," expressed Winters. "It's truly overwhelming. Yet, simultaneously, we must resist. We must challenge the narratives they attempt to spin."
