Oak Park Police Stopped More 10-year-old Black Boys than White Children of Any Age
When we listen to the experiences of our Black and Latinx youth with Police in Oak Park, we hear their pain. When we look at policing data, we see clearly how our village inflicts harm through field stops. We see that in the last five and a half years, Oak Park Police stopped more 10-year-old Black boys than white children of any age.
According to their own records, Oak Park Police stopped two 10-year-old Black boys, elementary school students, between January 2015 and June 2020. Police stopped one boy in 2016. They stopped another boy twice, within three months, in 2019. Police stopped both 10-year-old Black boys for a reason listed as “suspicious person.” In the same 5½ years that Oak Park police stopped these Black children, they stopped only one white 16-year-old male for a reason listed as “other.”
This is not what community safety looks like.
What is a field stop/interrogation?
Oak Park Village Manager, Cara Pavlicek, provided the following definition of a field stop:
“A field stop can be described best as a fact finding process. It occurs when a police officer has stopped a person, in a public place, to ask general questions when the individual is not in custody. Questions directed to the individual are about a crime – such as questions to determine if the individual has witnessed a crime – or alternatively under Illinois Statute (725 ILCS 5/107-14) [link provided by FTT team], which states:
A peace officer, after having identified himself as a peace officer, may stop any person in a public place for a reasonable period of time when the officer reasonably infers from the circumstances that the person is committing, is about to commit or has committed an offense as defined in Section 102-15 of this Code, and may demand the name and address of the person and an explanation of his actions. Such detention and temporary questioning will be conducted in the vicinity of where the person was stopped.
Upon completion of any stop under subsection (a) involving a frisk or search, and unless impractical, impossible, or under exigent circumstances, the officer shall provide the person with a stop receipt which provides the reason for the stop and contains the officer's name and badge number.”
Additional reading and data sources
A more comprehensive view on racial disparities in field interrogations by Oak Park police.
Freedom to Thrive Oak Park’s process to obtain public records from Oak Park Police Department.
Spreadsheet with all field interrogation/contact reports from January 2015 - June 2020.
Oak Park demographics are from the 2018 American Community Survey 5 year estimates.
