Ticketed, Towed, and Traumatized: Driving While Black on Campus

Michael Burton was stopped by Southern Illinois University-Carbondale campus police so many times that he dreads driving anywhere near the college. “Anytime I got behind the wheel, I was getting pulled over,” said the 21-year-old junior from the Austin neighborhood in Chicago.

He reached his breaking point in December 2023 while driving with friends — all of whom, like Burton, are Black — to an art exhibit on campus. Police pulled over his gray Jeep Compass for not coming to a complete stop and turning down a one-way street.

The Investigative Project obtained body camera footage of Burton’s encounter with the Southern Illinois University-Carbondale police through a public records request. Reporters watched the 58-minute body camera video recording from the police department. After the car’s occupants exit the vehicle carrying backpacks, Burton stands silently, cross-armed in fitted jeans and a black hoodie as one officer explains the alleged violations and hands Burton four tickets. He tells Burton to show up for a court date on Dec. 20 –– days after the semester was to end and the week before Christmas –– or have a warrant issued for his arrest.

“We were sitting in the car for about 30 to 40 minutes-ish, and then the fucking tow truck comes up,” he said.

In the video, Burton scratches his goatee as the tow truck driver hooks up the SUV as a woman standing next to Burton reaches over to hug him.

“Insane,” Burton said in an interview. The first-generation college student had relied on his car to get to school and work where he taught music at an early-childhood center. He was without a car for nearly a year, spent more than $1,200 on ride shares and Voi e-scooters, as he defended himself in court. At the end of the ordeal, his car was sold before he could recover it. In court, three of the four tickets were dismissed, leaving just one that he pled guilty to: failure to obey a stop sign.

Burton, who grew up on Chicago’s West Side and graduated from Christ the King Jesuit College Prep, is among thousands of Black students from the Chicago area attending a four-year public university in Illinois. Burton knew the perils of driving as a Black driver. However, when he enrolled at SIU-Carbondale, he said he never expected campus police to be so harsh. It’s a phenomenon playing out at public universities across the state, according to a first-of-its-kind analysis of the Illinois Department of Transportation’s traffic-stop data analyzed by the Investigative Project in collaboration with WBEZ and the Chicago Sun-Times.

The investigation found:

• Campus police have pulled over Black drivers at rates higher than Black student enrollment at those schools and at higher rates than the Black adult population of their surrounding communities, according to a new analysis of 33,388 traffic stops by police officers, from 2019 to 2023, at 11 Illinois public college campus police departments included in the analysis. Traffic stops data include students and the general public.
• During those stops, Black drivers were more likely than white drivers to get traffic tickets, while white drivers were more likely than Black drivers to drive away with warnings. Nearly 1 in every 3 Black drivers received a ticket rather than a verbal or written warning in comparison to almost 1 in every 5 white drivers, according to an analysis of the most recent five years of data available.
• Disparities have widened in recent years. Among those stopped by campus police, collectively, the share of stops involving Black drivers increased from 29% in 2019 to 34% in 2023. However, Black students and Black adults account for far lower percentages of all students and adults at the universities and the communities surrounding them. Meanwhile, the share of white drivers stopped by campus police, collectively, decreased from 54% in 2018 to 45% in 2023.

The analysis included traffic stops reported by campus police departments at 11 four-year public universities in Illinois: Eastern Illinois University; Governor’s State University; Illinois State University; Northeastern Illinois University; Northern Illinois University; Southern Illinois University-Carbondale; Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville; University of Illinois Chicago; University of Illinois Springfield; University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; and Western Illinois University.

The analysis excluded Chicago State University, which reported no traffic stops from 2019 to 2023.

The Investigative Project and WBEZ compared the share of Black drivers among those stopped and ticketed by campus police departments with the share of Black students among all students enrolled at the universities in fall 2022. The analysis also compared the percentage of traffic stops involving Black drivers with the share of Black adults among all adults in the communities surrounding the campuses.

The findings are “unfortunately not surprising,” said Ed Yohnka, director of communications and public policy at the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois. The findings are “consistent with the kinds of reports we see from other communities across the state.”

Yohnka said he worked alongside then-State Sen. Barack Obama in 2003 to get the data-collection bill passed following decades of conversations around the country “about driving while Black and brown.” The bill required police departments statewide to submit data on all traffic stops to the Illinois Department of Transportation, detailing driver demographics and whether the stop led to a citation or warning. On the 20-year anniversary of the law, the Investigative Project and WBEZ compiled the data, which is the foundation for the analysis of traffic stops on campuses.

“Folks on the advocacy side had always hoped that there would be a moment every year when this data came out where city councils, county boards and boards of trustees would be able to look at this data and … ask questions of the police officials about why certain things occurred,” Yohnka said, and “why there were disparities.”

“Even when you’re right, in a sense, you’re still wrong.”

When Billy Evans Jr., 24, decided to go to Northern Illinois University in fall 2018, he had big dreams. He wanted to open a building that has a barbershop in the front and a speakeasy in the back with live music, dinner and fine wine. He said he has about two semesters left.

But during his time there, Evans Jr., who is Black, has had five interactions with campus police –– three in cases where he contacted them for help –– and two in which he was stopped and issued warnings.

Black drivers made up just over half of all traffic stops by NIU campus police in the most recent five years of data available, though Black students made up 18% of student enrollment in fall 2022. In DeKalb, where NIU is located, about 13% of all adults are Black, according to 2023 five-year estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.

NIU interim Police Chief Jason John declined to be interviewed to discuss the findings. He issued a statement saying, “It’s difficult to disentangle disparities that can arise in traffic stop data, which can be impacted by a variety of factors, such as geographic areas patrolled.” He added, “Officers are trained to make decisions on traffic stops based on traffic violations, not the race, ethnicity or any other demographics of drivers.”

The widest disparity between traffic stops and enrollment by race was at the University of Illinois Chicago. There, Black drivers make up nearly 50% of traffic stops by campus police while Black students make up 8% of enrollment. In the Near West Side community area, where UIC is located, just 23% of adults are Black. However, at least 75% of all adults are Black in the East Garfield Park, North Lawndale and West Garfield Park communities just west of campus.

Sherri McGinnis Gonzalez, the associate vice chancellor for university communications for UIC, said that the department is “committed to equitable policing practices” and that “most traffic stops conducted by UIC Police are on city streets surrounding the campus and largely involve individuals who are not affiliated with the university.”

At Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Black drivers were involved in 49% of traffic stops conducted by campus police. Black drivers received 50% of traffic tickets issued by campus police, though Black student enrollment in fall 2022 was 15% of the university total. In Carbondale, overall, Black adults account for 25% of all adults in the city.

Former SIU-Carbondale student Clare Killman, 29, serves on the Carbondale City Council. She said that the analysis “seems to indicate that there’s a very clear racial bias on campus against Black people.”

A spokesperson from SIU-Carbondale, Kim Rendfeld, issued a statement saying, “Our sole motivation for traffic stops is public safety, regardless of the driver’s race or other characteristics.”

The Investigative Project found that the racial disparities are pervasive across the state’s public universities. For Illinois State University, 26% of the 3,916 traffic stops conducted between 2019 and 2023 were of Black drivers, while just 11% of its enrollment is composed of Black students. Similarly, in the town of Normal surrounding ISU, just 10% of all adults are Black.

Illinois State University Police Chief Aaron Woodruff, who has led the department for 14 years, said “a lot of this could be related to implicit bias, which is why you try to educate officers on that to begin with.” He said in an additional email statement that “there is no easy solution” to the “complexity” of how and why traffic stops happen but “using race as a basis for a traffic stop undermines the principle of equal protection under the law.”

“While disparities in traffic stop data may raise concerns, it is important to recognize that simple comparisons between stop rates and general population demographics does not provide an accurate assessment of policing practices,” Woodruff wrote. “Just as every individual carries their own story, every police-traffic stop unfolds its own narrative—each one distinct and shaped by its circumstances.”

Woodruff said his department has beefed up its training manual, requested money for body cameras and worked to educate its officers on implicit bias by bringing in Stanford University Professor Jennifer Eberhardt who has written on the topic.

For students like Evans Jr. at NIU, he takes advice on how to interact with police from his family. “I pretty much look to my dad for answers,” Evans Jr. said. “He understands how things are, especially as Black men. Even when you’re right, in a sense, you’re still wrong.”

“My character was shattered”

Black drivers stopped by Illinois’ public campus police officers were more likely to get traffic tickets while white drivers were more likely to get a warning, according to the analysis. Chicago State University, another Illinois public school, had no traffic stops on file in the state data from 2019 to 2023. 

Among the 11 campus police departments, the widest ticketing disparity between the rates of white and Black drivers getting warnings was at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. There, Black drivers were nearly twice as likely as white drivers to receive a ticket.

The Investigative Project submitted public records requests for complaints to the university regarding traffic stops from 2004 to 2023; the department released four. None were from the last five years, except one involving an e-bike.

In one complaint filed in 2017, a person driving a yellow Camaro with the windows tinted “just to resemble the car from Transformers’ Bumblebee” was pulled over by campus police for turning incorrectly down a one-way street. The complaint said the vehicle was then surrounded by multiple squad cars, campus officers, a sheriff and her canine. It had the “look of a major drug bust,” the complainant said. The race of the driver could not be determined from the complaint, which was partially redacted.

After the vehicle was searched for drugs, guns, and other weapons, the driver, whose name was redacted, received a ticket, according to the complaint. It was their second in days, after university police stopped them earlier that week for driving on a suspended license, which the driver alleged was the result of a “DMV” mistake.

“I just don’t honestly feel safe driving on campus anymore. I feel targeted by university police,” the driver said in the complaint. “I was harassed, my Fourth Amendment rights weren’t protected, and profiling played a part in this incident.”

“My character was shattered as people took pictures and videos and uploaded them to social media,” the complainant said. “I am now dealing with issues at work from this incident.”

Matt Ballinger, the police chief for the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, declined to be interviewed for this story to discuss the findings but issued a statement saying that campus officers conduct traffic stops on and off campus, including a large off-campus portion.

“The traffic-stop data reported to the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) includes hundreds of these interactions and are not limited to U. of I. students,” Ballinger said. “Moreover, the six Illinois public universities included in this study may have different community demographics and departmental policies.”

Abbigail Kepp, a University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign spokesperson, did not make herself available for an interview and issued a statement saying that campus officers attend several trainings. Their officers “exceed the minimum standards and attend various other trainings required by the University of Illinois and the Division of Public Safety,” she added.

During the time of the written complaint, the campus became a flashpoint about university policing when students, part of the #DefundUIPD movement, penned an open letter to university leaders urging them to re-evaluate the school’s relationship with both the campus police and the Champaign City Police Department. The letter also named the overticketing of Black drivers in Champaign and Urbana as a major concern.

The #DefundUIPD account on X, formerly known as Twitter, has been inactive since May 2022.

“I was on the phone with my boyfriend at the time, kind of freaking out.”

The pandemic left many college campuses bare, which meant fewer drivers on the road and fewer people being pulled over by campus police. However, Black drivers were still disproportionately stopped.

The Investigative Project found that, compared to pre-pandemic levels, the share of campus police stops involving Black drivers increased by 5 percentage points. During the same period, 2019 to 2023, the share of stops involving white drivers dropped 9 percentage points –– compounding an already wide disparity.

Campus police at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign stopped 1,093 Black women, the most of any of the 11 campus police departments reporting data from 2019 through 2023. The department reported it has never issued a verbal warning in a traffic stop in the past two decades, according to records it files with the state annually.

Davarian Baldwin, a historian and American studies professor at Trinity College in Connecticut, believes the Investigative Project’s data findings are a clear indication of racial profiling, consistent with the history of policing in America. He said the impacts of viral police killings like George Floyd’s have led to people pointing out that when police stops only end in tickets, it’s better than the alternative. But that’s not the only issue.

“You were stopped by the police, you were searched by the police, you were given a citation [ticket] by the police,” Baldwin said. “All these things produce trauma on their own.”

Isabelle Senechal and Jonathan Torres for the Investigative Project on Race and Equity; Matt Kiefer, assistant professor of journalism at Northwestern University’s Medill School; Jordan Butler, Courtney Dillon and Molly Hughes for CU-CitizenAccess; and Alden Loury and Amy Qin for WBEZ contributed to this report.

This Investigative Project on Race and Equity story was created in collaboration with Capital B News, Chicago Sun-Times, WBEZ, CU-CitizenAccess, Saluki Local Reporting Lab, and The Daily Egyptian.