It was June 24, 2016, when a CPD leader sent an email to every commander about a new strategy the department was deploying to reduce shootings and violence across the city: using ordinary traffic stops to search for guns and contraband.
What followed were thousands of drivers pulled over every year for minor equipment violations that then turned into full vehicle searches, CPD data reviewed by the I-Team shows.
A decade later, CPD's traffic stop strategy has been challenged in court as unconstitutional, and hundreds of thousands of city records behind the strategy, including that June 2016 email, are at the crux of an expanding lawsuit challenging the legality of the police tactic.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has asked a federal judge to ban the practice altogether, and in a major ruling recently handed down, all minority drivers stopped and searched by CPD will be part of the lawsuit.
Drivers who were searched by CPD in the last five years have told the I-Team they were left "terrified" over the experiences, and many have sued the city, some lawsuits leading to costly settlements for taxpayers.
ACLU attorney Alexandra Block has been on the front lines of a three-year long legal fight into CPD's traffic stop strategy and believes the CPD "has long known that these stops disproportionately affect Black and Latino drivers and Black and Latino neighborhoods."
"This is a racially discriminatory policy that has no corresponding benefit," Block told the I-Team. "They are dangerous for the drivers and the officers. They do not reduce crime."
It was through court-ordered discovery that attorneys discovered the June 24, 2016, email, and other internal presentations shared department-wide about the origins of the traffic stop strategy; 91 miles north of Chicago in Milwaukee.
"This really originated in the spring of 2016," Block explained. "The Chicago police department adopted a policy that was in place in another police department, and they just sort of wholesale picked up this idea of traffic stops to allegedly address crime."
CPD commanders received a PowerPoint presentation authored by the Milwaukee police department "recommending the mass pretextual traffic stop strategy," an expert witness for the ACLU wrote in a court declaration.
"We are trying a tactic in which we utilize traffic enforcement to reduce the number of shootings, motor vehicle thefts and street robberies," a CPD Deputy Chief wrote back in 2016. "By simply increasing the number of traffic stops in the areas in which you have violence and traffic crashes it will assist in reducing crime and making your district safer."
The police leader noted CPD leaders were "not seeking an increase in traffic citations" and "the traffic stop can be a positive experience and an opportunity to build community trust."
Civil rights attorneys argue the strategy has done the opposite.
"They result in a broken trust between CPD and members of the public," Block said.
Both Chicago's Law Department and CPD declined to comment for this story, citing pending litigation.
In 2024, the I-Team asked former CPD Superintendent Larry Snelling about the department's use of traffic stops turned searches.
"I can't tell you that was the city's policy, it's not the city's policy. It hasn't been," Snelling told the I-Team. "It may have been an initiative by someone who thinks or who felt that was a style of police work. For me, I see things differently. I'm more focused on violent crimes."
Block says the records they've uncovered show otherwise.
"It's well documented that this is an intentional program," Block said, "numerous emails and memos from high up members of the Chicago Police Department instructing officers to make more traffic stops, instructing officers to make stops not for the purpose of writing tickets, but for the purposes allegedly of addressing other types of crimes, violent crimes."
A federal judge has ordered Snelling and seven other former police superintendents to answer questions under oath about the strategy, including Garry McCarthy, John Escalante, Eddie Johnson, Charlie Beck, David Brown, Eric Carter, and Fred Waller.
Over the past year, Chicago police and the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability (CCPSA), a community oversight board, have been working on revised guidelines for when officers can conduct vehicle searches stemming from minor traffic violations.
But at a meeting last week, a CCPSA board member indicated those conversations have since stalled.
Block said the testimony of Snelling and other police leaders will provide greater transparency about the tactic's impact.
"This is still a very significant ongoing problem for Black and Brown drivers, and in Black and Brown neighborhoods," Block told the I-Team. "We are eager to see what Superintendent Snelling had in mind for the last three years."