[JURIST] The Chicago Police Department [official website] has decided to allow independent evaluations of their stop-and-frisk procedures that many have said specifically target African Americans under an agreement [agreement, PDF] with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) [official website]. The agreement comes after a March 2015 report [report, PDF] released by the ACLU of Illinois that found Chicago officers disproportionately target minorities, particularly African Americans, in their stop-and-frisks. The agreement provides that US magistrate judge Arlander Keys [professional profile] will release two reports a year on whether the stop-and-frisks conducted by the department are meeting legal requirements. The report from March stated that out of the 250,000 stop-and-frisk encounters in the city of Chicago that did not result in arrests, nearly three-quarters of them were African Americans.

Stop-and-frisk procedures [JURIST backgrounder] have been under heavy scrutiny around the country recently, including New York City. In August of last year New York City formally dropped [JURIST report] the city’s appeal of rulings in lawsuits involving the New York Police Department’s (NYPD) use of stop-and-frisk tactics. Mayor Bill De Blasio’s administration agreed to end the lawsuit against the NYPD after reaching a settlement requiring three years of NYPD oversight by a court-appointed monitor. Critics of the procedures claim they are unconstitutional [JURIST op-ed] because they unfairly target minorities, who are disproportionately selected for stops and searches. Other criticisms indicate that the procedure itself is unwieldy and ineffective [JURIST op-ed], emphasizing quantity of searches over their quality and resulting in an unnecessary drain on department time and resources.