HR0405 99TH GENERAL ASSEMBLY

HR0405 LRB099 11976 RLC 34481 r

HOUSE RESOLUTION

WHEREAS, In the past year, the nation's attention has turned to police practices because of high profile killings, including Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, Tamir Rice in Ohio, and Eric Garner in New York; and

WHEREAS, Concerns about policing extend beyond the use of force and into the everyday interactions of police with community members; and

WHEREAS, In African-American and Latino communities, everyday interactions with police often result in a "stop and frisk"; and

WHEREAS, Under the United States Supreme Court decision in Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968), an officer is allowed to stop a person if the officer has reasonable suspicion that the person has been, is, or is about to be engaged in criminal activity; once a person is stopped, if an officer has reasonable suspicion that the person is dangerous and has a weapon, the officer may frisk the person including ordering him or her to put his or her hands on a wall or car, and allowing the officer to frisk the person's body to determine if a weapon is being carried; and

WHEREAS, This experience is often invasive, humiliating, and disturbing; and

WHEREAS, Many police departments have failed to adequately train, supervise, and monitor law enforcement in minority communities for decades, resulting in a failure to ensure that officers' use of stop and frisk is lawful; and

WHEREAS, A report by the American Civil Liberties Union of Chicago found that the Chicago Police Department has a current practice of unlawfully using stop and frisk: "Although officers are required to write down the reason for stops, in nearly half of the stops we reviewed, officers either gave an unlawful reason for the stop or failed to provide enough information to justify the stop."; and

WHEREAS, The report states that "stop and frisk" in Chicago is disproportionately concentrated in the African-American community comprising 72% of all stops, even though African-Americans constitute just 32% of the city's population and in majority white police districts, minorities were stopped disproportionately to the number of minority people living in those districts; and this failure to properly record data makes it impossible for police supervisors, or the public, to identify bad practices and make policy changes to address them; the abuse of stop and frisk is a violation of individual rights, but it also poisons police and community relations; and

WHEREAS, In Chicago, there were more than 250,000 stops that did not lead to an arrest; Chicagoans were stopped more than 4 times as often as New Yorkers at the height of New York City's stop and frisk practice; and

WHEREAS, Chicago refuses to keep adequate data about its officers' stops; officers do not identify stops that result in an arrest or ordinance violation, and they do not keep any data on when they frisk someone; therefore, be it

RESOLVED, BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE NINETY-NINTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that the House urges the General Assembly to pass legislation that adopts the recommendations of the American Civil Liberties Union of Chicago as follows:

(1) require police departments to collect data on each frisk, record the frisk, the reason for the frisk (which must be separate from the reasons for the stop), and the results of the search such as whether there was a weapon or other contraband and if so, what type and make the data public;

(2) expand and make permanent the Illinois Traffic Stop Statistical Study Act;

(3) require police departments to collect data on all stops and make the data public;

(4) require police officers to receive regular training on the legal requirements for stop and frisk and how to record them properly; and

(5) require that police officers provide civilians with a receipt at the end of pedestrian stops, traffic stops, and consensual encounters stating the officer's name, the time and place of the encounter, and the reason for the encounter.