Chicago police officers skipped the official paperwork on roughly 267,240 traffic stops in 2025, according to new records, leaving a gaping hole in the city’s data on who gets pulled over and why. That works out to about 732 undocumented stops a day and marks nearly a 27% jump from 2024, recharging a heated debate over whether CPD should lean on minor equipment and registration issues to justify pulling drivers over.
FOIA Data Lays Out the Massive Discrepancy
According to WTTW News, the city’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications (OEMC) logged 267,240 traffic stops in 2025 that never showed up in the Chicago Police Department’s required Traffic Statistical Study (TSS) “blue card” system. CPD records obtained through FOIA show officers filed 224,846 blue cards in 2025, a 24% drop in documented stops from 2024, leaving a large and unresolved gap between the two sets of numbers. WTTW News also reported that both the department and the mayor’s office declined to comment on the discrepancy.
Two Systems, Two Stories On Traffic Stops
Here is how the missing stops fall through the cracks. When an officer radios in a traffic stop, OEMC dispatchers create a record of that encounter. Department policy then requires officers to later complete a paper TSS blue card with details about the stop. In practice, those two systems are not lining up. As WTTW News reported, Noe Flores, deputy director of CPD’s Office of Analysis and Evaluation, told alderpeople that OEMC logs and blue cards have become “almost two different data sets.” An earlier investigation by Injustice Watch, working with Bolts, reached a similar conclusion, finding that radio-dispatch data suggested CPD’s official reports were significantly undercounting traffic stops.
Pretextual Stops At The Center Of Policy Clash
The timing of these revelations is awkward for city leaders. The Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability (CCPSA) and CPD are in the middle of a high-stakes fight over pretextual stops, where officers pull drivers over for minor registration or equipment violations while actually looking for unrelated criminal activity. The CCPSA has released a draft traffic-stops policy for public review and is considering tighter limits on those encounters. The commission’s announcement and draft language are available through the CCPSA’s public materials, which outline how any new rules might narrow the use of low-level violations as a reason to pull someone over.
Advocates Say Missing Data Hides Who Gets Hurt
Civil-rights advocates warn that the missing records make it much tougher to track whether Black and Latino drivers are still stopped at far higher rates than White drivers. The ACLU of Illinois has highlighted statewide stop data that shows persistent racial disparities and has called for more transparency and stronger oversight of reporting, according to the organization. Researchers and community groups argue that undercounting can blur the picture of who is stopped, where stops are most heavily concentrated and whether policy reforms are actually reducing harm or simply shifting it out of view.
Legal And Oversight Stakes Keep Getting Higher
Any official change to CPD’s traffic-stop rules or reporting practices will have to clear several layers of scrutiny. The CCPSA would need to approve a policy, the Illinois attorney general’s office would have to sign off and the independent monitoring team that enforces the federal consent decree would review those changes. Ultimately, U.S. District Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer could decide how traffic-stop rules fit into that court-ordered reform process. Reporting has noted that city officials and the attorney general’s office have been negotiating how, and even whether, traffic-stop regulations should be folded into the consent-decree framework, with litigation records and background materials available through court-document repositories and the Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse…