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THE SIXTH ANNUAL STATE REPORT on Illinois
Traffic Stop Statistics was recently
released by the Center for Research in
Law and Justice of the University of Illinois
at Chicago. The statistics provide a
window into traffic stop data that helps
local communities answer a fundamental
question: “Are the number of traffic stops and searches
involving motor vehicles operated by members of a racial
minority disproportionate to the number of traffic stops
involving motor vehicles operated by persons who are not
members of a racial minority?”
What does the data tell us about traffic stop behavior of
the Champaign, Urbana, and University of Illinois police
departments?
To help analyze this, the state assigns an annual “ratio” to
each police department. This “ratio” is determined by dividing
the percentage of minority stops by the percentage of the
minority driving population in a community. In this way, a
ratio of 1.00 means local police departments stop Caucasian
and minority drivers in proportion to their composition of
the driving public. As an example, the 2009 statewide ratio
of 1.12 indicates that a minority driver is 12% more likely to
be stopped than a Caucasian driver in Illinois.
In contrast, the 2009 ratios for the Champaign,
Urbana, and U of I police departments were 1.45, 1.56,
and 1.36, respectively. All three local police departments
stop minority drivers in significantly greater numbers than
their percentage of the driving public. Minority drivers
accounted for 43%, 48%, and 38% of the stops in each of
the three police jurisdictions respectively while composing
only 30%, 31%, and 28% of the driving public.
This is not a new phenomenon. In fact this disparity
has been the case for all three police departments since
traffic stop statistics were first released in 2004. The last
three years, ratios have steadily increased from 1.34, 1.43,
1.45 in Champaign and 1.47, 1.49, 1.56 in Urbana.
Urbana’s ratio of 1.56 represents a six-year high, placing it
in the top 29% of 970 state law enforcement agencies with
the highest ratios. The University police’s ratio has
remained fairly constant near 1.36.
A second component of the Illinois Traffic Stops Statistics
Study focuses on the percentage of citations issued.
This is of particular interest because the officer has clear
knowledge of the race of the driver when deciding to write
a ticket or give a warning. The citation percentages below
are six-year averages.
Champaign police appear to ticket Caucasian and
minority drivers similarly (65% vs. 64%). But a distinct
disparity appears for the Urbana (57% vs. 61%) and U of I
(18% vs. 25%) police departments. In fact, in each of the
last six years minority drivers were given a higher percentage
of citations than their Caucasian counterparts by both
departments. It is also misleading to describe the situation
in Champaign in strictly equitable terms, for although
Caucasian and minority drivers are ticketed relatively
equally, minority drives are still 45% more likely to be
pulled over in the first place. It is interesting to note the
low percentage of citations given by the U of I police. Evidently
drivers on campus are treated differently, with Caucasian
drivers being ticketed only 18% of the time.
A final component of the Illinois Traffic Stops Statistics
Study reports on consent searches. Although the number
of consent searches is small, they are important statistics
because they can reveal potential bias in the officer’s decision
to request to search a car.
In 2009 Champaign, Urbana, and U of I police requested
22, 17, and 84 searches of stopped drivers respectively.
However, each police department requested minority drivers
roughly twice as often as Caucasian drivers to consent
to a search although the statistics show that contraband
was found approximately twice as often in Caucasian vehicles.
Also, the 84 consent searches by campus police
appears to be inordinately high when compared to Urbana
and Champaign.
Can we now answer the question posed at the beginning
of this article? “In our community do police stop
minority drivers disproportionately to their composition
of the driving public?” The bulk of traffic stop statistics
suggest an affirmative answer. The numbers do not tell us
why this disparity exists, only that it does. Racial bias
must be considered as a possible factor.
To comprehend the economic impact of these traffic
stop disparities in our local community, it is helpful to
visualize a situation where stop figures are actually equitable
and proportional between minority and Caucasian
drivers. Adjusting minority driver figures to be proportional
to Caucasian driver figures or adjusting Caucasian
driver figures to be proportional to minority driver figures
can easily do this.
Thus, if minority drivers were stopped proportionally
to Caucasian drivers in our community, there would have
been 18,311 fewer stops and 10,936 fewer citations of
minority drivers over the past six years. At the minimum
moving violation rate of $125, that would have been a savings
of $1,367,000 to minority drivers in
Champaign/Urbana. Conversely, if Caucasian drivers were
stopped proportionally to minority drivers, there would
have been 43,211 more stops and 27,589 more citations
of Caucasian drivers over the past six years, or an additional
cost of $3,447,500 to Caucasian drivers in Champaign/
Urbana.
The State Traffic Stops Statistics Studies show that for
some reason minority and Caucasian drivers in our community
are policed differently. With this information in
hand, it is now the responsibility of our communities,
elected officials, and local police departments to begin
answering the question of why?
For more information, the reports for the years 2004
through 2008, as well as a methodological overview of the
project are available at the IDOT website: www.dot.il.gov.
The 2009 report is available at: www.dot.il.gov/trafficstop/
results09.html

CITY COURT IS AN UNKNOWN ENTITY to most citizens in
Champaign County. When people think of courts, they
think of the county or federal courts where one has certain
constitutional rights. City Court is something altogether
different.
You might wind up in City Court if you have violated
a city ordinance and haven’t paid the fine in time. If you
don’t pay the fine by the deadline, or if you decide to
challenge the charge, you will appear in City Court
either by walking in at a certain date, by being brought
there in chains by a sheriff’s deputy, or by answering to
the court via closed circuit TV from one of the county
jails. The latter two options are for people who have
ignored their summonses.
Judge Holly Clemons of Champaign County currently
hears the cases in City Court. Prosecution is conducted by
an attorney in the city’s legal office. Both Urbana and
Champaign make use of City Court, but Champaign uses
it four times more frequently more than does Urbana, normally
once a week as opposed to once a month.
THE RIGHTS OF DEFENDANTS IN CITY COURT
Defendants’ rights are very truncated in City Court. The
defendant has the right to a trial by jury—if the defendant
is able to pay for it. The fee is $66.25 for a jury of 6, or
$137.50 for a jury of twelve.
The fee is not remunerated even if the defendant is
found innocent. Defendants in the City Court also have
the right to be represented by an attorney, but again only if
they can afford one. No public defenders are provided in
these trials.
CLASS AND RACE
These policies are particularly disturbing when we look
at those who wind up in City Court. Most defendants
are there because they could not pay their fines. The
fines for the 21 kinds of offences prosecuted in the City
Court run up to $700, with minimums being $165,
$215, and $310 depending on the specific offence. In
my own court observations, $350 was a very common
amount. In addition, there is the $750 court expense fee
that one must pay to the county if one is found guilty.
Until very recently, it was virtually automatic that the
only alternative to paying over $1,000 was to work it off
by sitting in the county jail; the meter there would tick
$20 off your “debts” to the city and county per day. That
was a bad deal for the county because it crowded the jail
and it cost the county far more than $20 a day to hold
and feed the prisoner. So, several months ago the sheriff
decided to use monitored home confinement for some
of those “debtors.” Debtors prison for private debts has
been abolished. But it is alive and well for public debt, at
least in our area.
Despite the costs of confinement to the county, the city
of Champaign still manages to make a good bit of money
off of these infractions. In 2009, 60% of the violations
were paid directly or by mail, bringing in $493,365. In
addition to that, the city made $119,073.71 from people
found guilty by the court.
In addition to the clear patterns we see regarding the
economic class of the people appearing in the court,
African Americans are severely overrepresented. In a
recent study by Athena Hollins, it was revealed that 87%
of those appearing in Champaign’s City Court between
March and May 2010 were African Americans. Keep in
mind that the percentage of African Americans in Champaign
is only about 15.
Hollins looked at the three most common charges
brought before the court: “Specific Noise Violations, ” i.e.,
loud noise that can be heard beyond property lines or residential
units, “Vehicular Noise Violations“, i.e., mainly
noise from car radios, and possession of 10 grams or less
of cannabis.
In the first noise category, for which the minimum fine
is $200, 68% of the defendants were African American. In
the vehicular noise category, for which the minimum fine
is $165, over 90% were African American. In the cannabis
possession category, for which the minimum fine is $310,
89% were African American. Some of the other offences
that come to City Court, such as public urination and
placing trash in another person’s trash bin, hit the homeless
particularly hard.
Only 39% of the noise violations and 29% of the
cannabis violations were paid directly at the city building
or by mail. On the other hand, 89% of the citations
for underage drinking of alcohol, 92% of delivering
alcohol to minors, and 85% of the having beer kegs at a
party without a license offences were settled by direct
payment or mail. Here we see a racial and class bias at
work. The latter offences were those committed largely
by university students, the vast majority of whom are
white. They or their parents could afford to pay the fines
and avoid City Court.
Many in the African American community do not have
the financial resources to avoid City Court. Furthermore,
the fines and court costs that are extracted from the
African American community are extracted from exactly
that segment of the population that can least afford to pay.
They also wind up disproportionately populating our two
county jails.
A major reason for this is the very different ways that the
African American and white neighborhoods in Champaign
are policed. The very aggressive, militarized, zero-tolerance
approach that the police take in the North End, especially
with youth who like their music loud and share the same
enjoyment from a joint that many white kids do without
police intervention, is largely responsible for this bias.
CONCLUSION
We began this article by asking, “what kind of court is City
Court?” What we find is that City Court is tailor-made to
take advantage of poor people, and especially African
Americans who make up a large percentage of our poor
citizens. It is a court in which there is no right to a lawyer
and no right to a jury trial; those things must be bought.
In other words, City Court is a court where the guarantee
of equal protection of the laws embodied in the 14th
Amendment of the US Constitution does not apply. City
court reflects the spirit of Anatole France’s characterization
of French capitalist laws in the late 19th Century: “The
law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the
poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to
steal bread.” And in our City Court, to jail you shall go if

Is America in the grip of a right-wing backlash that will hit
the November elections like a hurricane? This narrative is
gathering steam. It is fed not only by the minority partisan
right-wing media but also its majority “liberal” counterpart,
which loves a horse race and is fascinated with the
Tea Party, even if it isn’t so eager for the Republicans to
take Congress. Regardless of the outcome, 90-plus percent
of the pundits and press will cheese up the same, tired, old
cliché in their post-election analysis: The Democrats were
punished (they will inevitably lose at least some seats in
Congress) because they tried to go too far, too fast and too
left for the inherently conservative American masses. And
this junk will be consumed for years, adding another layer
of fat to the lazy couch potato that is American journalism’s
“conventional wisdom.”
How about another narrative that makes more sense?
Let’s start with the economic issues, since the economy
was the number one issue for likely voters in the latest
New York Times/CBS poll. Our worst and longest recession
since the Great Depression was caused by a real estate
bubble that accumulated and burst before Obama was
elected. The Democrats passed a stimulus package that
was much too small to compensate for the resulting loss of
private spending. As my colleague Dean Baker has pointed
out, the collapse of this bubble would be expected to
knock about $1.2 trillion annually off of private demand.
This is about eight times the size of government stimulus
spending when we subtract the budget cuts and tax
increases of state and local governments (special thanks to
the Republicans for cutting $100 billion from the stimulus
bill that would have gone straight to municipal governments
to prevent some of this).
Now how does this get presented in the media? First,
we have a debate about whether the stimulus helped or
hurt the economy, or whether it created or saved any jobs
at all. This is somewhat ridiculous, from the standpoint of
national income accounting. It is reminiscent of the
“debates” that carried on in the media for many years (they
continue in some quarters), long after the question was
settled in the scientific community, as to whether global
warming was taking place. The non-partisan Congressional
Budget Office estimates that between 1.4 and 3.3 million
more people were employed by mid-2010, as a result
of the stimulus. There is a wide range of uncertainty about
the size of the effect, but there’s hardly any doubt that the
stimulus helped save jobs and output.
Then the horror movie scenes began about the dreaded
budget deficit, which over the next decade is almost
entirely attributable to two non-stimulus-related items:
Iraq and Afghanistan war spending and the Bush tax cuts.
In spite of this well-financed campaign against the scourge
of red ink, only 3 percent of voters see the deficit as the
most important issue facing the country, as compared with
32 percent who chose the economy and 28 percent for
jobs. But somehow the deficit got to be so alarming to
somebody that it became politically impossible for Congress
to even talk about another stimulus for the economy.
So very predictably, the recovery lost steam and the
Democrats felt just “powerless” to do anything to boost the
economy and employment before the election. This guaranteed
big losses for their party in the election.
It didn’t help that the Obama Administration failed to create
a distinction for voters between the $700 billion bailout
for the banks, which was widely hated for obvious reasons,
and their stimulus package. Most Americans still don’t see a
difference. This was a huge public relations failure.
But all this adds up to something different from a
“right-wing backlash.” Indeed, the New York Times/CBS
poll shows a 20 percent approval rating for Congressional
Republicans (the same as for the Tea Party) as opposed to
30 percent for Democrats.
But 55 percent of voters—record for the past 20 years —
say it is time to give a new person a chance to represent
their district.
The conclusion is obvious: Voters are angry—not the
anger of the rich who believe, as John D. Rockefeller
famously said, that “God gave me my money.” It is a populist
rage that will drive some independent or swing voters
to vote against incumbents and the incumbent party. Even
if it means voting for people who they don’t particularly
like, trust, or agree with on the issues.
Republicans were able to keep this country moving to
the right for nearly four decades—including through the
Clinton years. For much of this time they used a fake populist
appeal based on cultural issues, portraying a “liberal
elite” who was contemptuous of the values of workingclass
white voters—who have generally been the biggest
group of swing voters. The strategy succeeded because
Democrats refused to make the obvious economic populist
appeal to the real interests of these voters—who were getting
hammered by the loss of manufacturing jobs, weakening
of labor and redistribution of income that was engineered
by the leadership of both parties. In 2004, non-college-
educated whites with household income between
$30,000-$50,000 voted for Republicans for Congress by a
60-38 percent margin; in 2006 a switch to a 50-50 split
(22 percentage points) contributed significantly to the
Democrats’ victory in Congress.
The Republicans’ long-term strategy collapsed in 2008.
The Democrats were lucky in that the peak of the financial
crisis hit just before the elections that year. In October
2008 the number of Americans believing that the country
was on the wrong track hit an all-time record of 89 percent.
Most importantly, this situation focused the attention
of swing voters on the economy, something that negates
the potential appeal of “distraction” issues such as abortion,
gay marriage, guns or even the thinly-veiled racism
that had been part of the Republicans’ appeal since President
Nixon’s post-civil-rights-movement “southern strategy.”
Obama himself had eschewed economic populism in
his campaign (making an exception in Midwestern primaries
such as Wisconsin, where he needed more working-
class support in order to win), in keeping with his
carefully cultivated media image of post-partisan conciliator.
But the economy did the job for him, and for the
Democratic Party.
What does this mean for the elections of 2010? I would
predict that Democrats—even in some not-so-Democratic
districts—who appeal to the massive populist discontent
among the voters will do better than those who follow the
conventional wisdom and run to the right of Obama on such
issues as health care reform or taxes. This applies especially
to the swing voters but could also be significant in rallying
the party’s base, which is somewhat disillusioned and needs
to be energized. Since this is a non-presidential-year election,
voter turnout could easily swing the election.
It is not so hard to make this appeal: millions of people
are losing their homes and their jobs, while the Wall Street
gang who sank the economy are once again raking in billions
—and only because they have been rescued and subsidized
with hundred of billions of our taxpayer dollars. If enough
Democrats campaign on these kinds of themes and offer a
populist alternative, they will keep both houses of Congress.

On Monday, September 27, several anti-war protesters
and civil rights advocates from our community decided
to appear at the FBI quarters in west Champaign to register
their protest and dismay upon learning of the
actions of the FBI in raiding peace activists’ homes.
Raids were conducted throughout the nation, particularly
in Minneapolis-St. Paul and in Chicago during the
early morning of Friday September 24.
The FBI raids were ostensibly intended to ferret out
supporters of terrorism, especially those lending support
to Hamas and Hisbollah in the Middle East and to the
FARC—the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia,
these groups having been labeled terrorist organizations
by the U.S. State Department. However, anti-war and progressive
communities suspected that the underlying purpose
of the FBI actions was to intimidate and harass antiwar/
peace activists and hinder their activism. Several of
those targeted in the raids and subpoenaed to appear
before a grand jury in Chicago had been active not only in
supporting the Palestinian people in their struggle against
Israeli oppression or in opposing a repressive Columbian
government, recognized for having committed human
rights abuses, but perhaps not coincidentally, had also
been active in demonstrating against Bush foreign policies
during the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis
in 2008.
Many have pointed out that the raids, in addition to
their intimidation aspects—an attempt to criminalize dissent—
were fishing expeditions. After violently entering
the homes brandishing guns and crashing doors, extensive
searches of the premises were made, justified with search
warrants, and personal belongings of the occupants were
seized, including photos, cameras, computers, correspondence,
even clothes and other personal property. Yet, no
formal charges were filed against the occupants. That
would up to a grand jury to decide.
As for a local protest, there was little time to organize
after hearing of the raids, but during the weekend of Sept.
25, a national protest was called for on September 27 and
members of AWARE, the local Anti-War-Anti-Racism-
Effort, decided at their Sunday meeting to join. Emails
were therefore sent out on Monday, Sept. 27, requesting
and informing all those incensed at the FBI actions to
assemble at the local FBI offices at 4:30 that day.
Initially, few of those ready to participate knew just
where the FPI offices were located, their address not being
easily found in the local (AT&T) telephone directory, but
a search of Google does list the address as 2117 W Park
Court, Champaign. This
location is on a dead end
street on the far western
side of Champaign, near the
U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The FBI offices are on
the second floor of a nondescript
brick building whose
first floor seemed unoccupied.
The only possible hint
that the FBI offices were
here was the presence of
video cameras attached to
the building. It was otherwise
a tranquil location with
ample parking.
Our assembly was gradual.
The first person I saw
was AWARE activist Karen Medina, sitting on grass making
a protest sign not far from the FBI building. She indicated
to me where the building was. As I wandered in
that direction, a few others were seen ambling about,
clearly seeking our target. Eventually, perhaps seven or
eight protesters arrived. What to do? We had no bullhorn,
and the quiet court where we assembled had little
traffic for us to address. After several minutes, I took a
photo of our little group before the building [shown] and
then with our group increased by a few more stragglers,
we decided to enter the building. We squeezed into a
small elevator and ascended to the second floor. Confronting
us was a constricted hallway and a blank door
with a keyhole and a keypad panel. We knocked at the
door, hoping to address whatever personnel were inside.
After a delay of perhaps a minute, a man opened the
door. No uniform, no badge that I could discern. He
seemed annoyed: What were we doing there? Why had
we come?
We announced that we were there because we were
alarmed at what the FBI had done in raiding the homes of
anti-war people in Minneapolis-St- Paul, Chicago, and
elsewhere, and we had come to protest these actions and
ask for explanations. The agent seemed dumbfounded. He
said he knew nothing about the raids; it was not his business
at what might have occurred in Minnesota, Chicago,
or elsewhere. His business was with Champaign. Moreover,
it was close to five o’clock, and he was about to leave.
He was not about to discuss anything with us. He then
abruptly walked back into his
office, closing the door, and
that was the end of it. We
went back down the elevator,
astounded at the response we
received. Was it really true
this guy knew nothing about
what his FBI conferees elsewhere
had been up to?
By this time, a few more people
had come by, so we were
now a group of about a
dozen, a few of us having
signs. We then disassembled,
not quite knowing what else
we could effectively do.
A press conference was
announced subsequently,
but no C-U press people attended. There was very little
news of the FBI raids in the mass media—brief reports in
the NYT and the Chicago Tribune. The AP newswire carried
the story as did the Minneapolis-Star Tribune. It
struck many that the kind of repression of dissidence
under the recent G. W. Bush administration was now
being carried out the Obama administration, all in the
name of the “war on terror”. The news as of October 6
was that those subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury
in Chicago would refuse to answer questions, citing their
Fifth Amendment rights. Such a stance is understandable
in view of the prosecutorial and easily biased nature of
Grand Jury procedures.

REFERENCES:
FBI Raids and the Criminalization of Dissent
FBI Raids Homes of Antiwar and Pro-Palestinian Activists