It’s the traffic stop — the flimsy reasons, the race-based reasons behind the traffic stop – that bring me back so often to the death of Christian Wallace on May 31 at the Shell on Austin and Harrison.
Wallace was shot four times by an Oak Park police officer after a furious back-and-forth battle for control of a concealed and likely illegal handgun that Wallace had not disclosed to an officer before a pat down began at the side of his car.
An investigation continues by policing agencies outside of Oak Park. That probe may go on for months. And, in the end, it will make a determination of whether the Oak Park officer’s actions were legally justified.
But now, almost 60 days out from Wallace’s death, the conversation is taking shape in Oak Park in ways ultimately more consequential than the final legal determination.
Yes, there are questions about why the officer fired his gun 9 times, the last four shots coming as Wallace was still mobile and moving away from the officer with his back turned. That those shots came toward Austin Boulevard as the late Sunday evening car and pedestrian traffic was still considerable will need to be assessed. Experts will need to determine where Wallace’s gun was located in those final seconds and video, wisely released weeks back by the village, seems to be inconclusive on that issue.
From our first reporting of this shooting, though, my question has been “why was the person pulled over?”
It is the elemental question. Oak Park officials were mum on that for too long. Not until the village finally released bodycam footage and two angles of security camera footage from the gas station, did police have to detail why the still unidentified officer chose to pull the man over.
And the explanation was exactly what one feared. The traffic stop was initiated because Wallace failed to use his turn signal when changing lanes on Austin Boulevard and because he failed to use a turn signal before he reached 100 feet from his turn.
Or, in clearer language, Wallace was pulled over because he was a Black man driving in Oak Park.
We have the data. Oak Park village trustees look at the data on traffic stops regularly. Despite all of the maybe sincere intentions, the data, quarter by quarter, does not change much. Black people are stopped at a substantially disproportionate percentage than white people.
The Oak Park officer was following the policy on making traffic stops. Will the shooting ultimately be declared legally justified. We will see in time. But there is no question that under the village’s policing policy this fully bogus, ultimately deadly traffic stop was proper.
That is why it is so important that the village board this week will take up that policy. Trustees Derek Eder and Chibuike Enyia have placed the topic on the agenda with a very specific timeline, logical list of staff and commission to be involved.
This is not complicated. This is long overdue. And Christian Wallace should still be alive.
