From July to December 2024, Oak Park police stopped 168 pedestrians, the majority of whom were Black men, police data shows. That matches the last report from April to June 2024, when the stops were also mostly Black men.
Of 168 stops in this period, 139 of them were Black men, women or children. And 120 of them were Black men or boys.
Only 19 stops were initiated by police, according to Oak Park Police Chief Shatonya Johnson. The other 149 were calls for service from residents asking police to respond.
The report was discussed Tuesday at a meeting of the Oak Park village board.
Details about each specific stop can be found in the report, but common reasons for stops of Black individuals included “suspicious person,” “trespass warning” or “suspicious activity.”
Trustee Cory Wesley said he has an issue with the racial disparity in these stops, but that’s an issue more so with the community than the police. Community members are calling police mainly about Black people, he pointed out.
“I get the feeling that our community doesn’t understand how to recognize suspicious white people,” he said.
Village Manager Kevin Jackson agreed it’s important to build understanding in the community and continue to educate residents.
“Looking at the data, I don’t see biased stops,” Johnson said. “What I do see is the partnership that the police department has with the community in helping us keep the community safe.”
More on the data
The report showed that from July to December, 71% to 90% of individuals stopped each month were Black.
Reasons for these stops mirrored previous quarters, including “suspicious person,” “trespass warning,” “suspicious activity” and “other,” related to a welfare check.
Johnson added that a lot of calls police receive are related to retail theft. These could be incidents where a business decides not to pursue the issue, but a trespass warning is given instead.
“We do spend time helping to educate our residents about what is suspicious, what constitutes suspicious activity, and we’ll continue to educate,” Johnson said.
A potential bias?
Johnson said she doesn’t find the data, on a surface level, to be biased.
“Looking at just the distribution by race it may look like it’s focused on one specific race,” Trustee Ravi Parakkat said. “But I’m trying to get to the next level of detail to see if that actually indicates bias or if it’s just reporting of data.”
But Wesley responded that it’s not just about the data reported, but the data that is absent. A disproportionate number of calls are related to Black people versus white people in Oak Park. That could be due to unconscious bias, he said.
“There is a segment of calls here that probably would show up that don’t show up here because a lot of folks don’t recognize it as biased,” Wesley said.
Trustee Chibuike Enyia agreed with Wesley. He asked what the process is when a call for suspicious activity is determined to be unfounded, and Johnson said the conversations between officers and the caller in that instance varies. Enyia added he’d like there to be a more standardized process for that.
Trustee Brian Straw brought up a concern about a call at 3:48 a.m. Oct. 22 where a man was reported as sleeping at the same location for two nights in a row. He said he understands the need to respond to calls for service, but this seemed like an instance where the person should be connected to services rather than being asked to move in the middle of the night.
“I don’t know that making someone move along when they have nowhere to go and no way to get there in the middle of the night, I just don’t know what we’re doing there,” Straw said.
Johnson pointed out the village is working to implement its E.C.H.O or alternative calls for service program to better connect individuals with services. She also added that this individual had the same clothes on as an offender in a burglary earlier that night.
But police do make individuals outside aware they can come to the police station, to a warming shelter or to an overnight shelter in those instances. That’s for their safety, too, she said.
According to the police data, 28 arrests were made during the third and fourth quarter of 2024 from these 168 stops. Those were for retail theft, active warrants and other criminal activity.
Johnson said most of the individuals being ticketed or arrested as a result of these calls are not Oak Park residents, and some are individuals experiencing homelessness.
And arrests are higher when police self-initiate a stop. Johnson said that’s because officers can recognize an individual engaging in criminal activity when conducting a stop.