CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) - Outgoing Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx is proposing that prosecutors in her office not pursue drug and gun charges from minor traffic stops.
If police officers find guns, drugs or stolen items in a car they pull over for something like expired or missing plates, Kim Foxx is proposing that her office not prosecute without other probable cause.
This comes two months after police killed Dexter Reed in a shootout that started with a stop over a seatbelt.
Foxx told the Chicago Sun-Times it was time to do something about a rise in stops that target drivers of color and often do not lead to arrests while not reducing violence.
Traffic stops jumped six-fold between 2015 and 2019. A report by the group Impact for Equity said Black drivers are six times more likely to be stopped than whites, and Latinos twice as often.
Some of Foxx’s staff said they were caught off guard. with one calling the proposal “unthinkable.” Alderwoman Silvana Tabares, a police department ally, labeled it “outrageous.”
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