A voucher program that helps motorists fix safety equipment on their cars is about to begin with hopes of preventing future traffic stops in Springfield that could lead to arrests or confrontations with police.
That is one result of talks with representatives of the Springfield chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union and Springfield Police Department over longstanding racial disparities involving police stops of Black and white motorists.
The talks also have resulted in a new policy in which Springfield police now are required to document their reasons for requesting to search a car for contraband after a stop. It’s not clear yet whether the policy has reduced the number of requests, SPD leaders said.
They continue to deny a pattern of racial bias in traffic stops. And they continue to refuse a key request from the ACLU – one or more open forums in which the public can vent concerns about treatment by the police.
“I think the department is not acknowledging what the public is feeling about traffic stops,” said Ken Page, president of the Springfield ACLU and a former president of the Springfield branch of the NAACP.
Setting up one or more public forums for complaints about police would be more productive than the current situation in which residents sometimes air their views about law enforcement during the public comment portion of Springfield City Council meetings, Page said.
Police Chief Joseph Behl, the department’s No. 2 cop until he succeeded retiring chief Kenneth Scarlette at the end of May, agreed with Scarlette that public forums wouldn’t be wise.
Behl pointed to a tense public forum held in Springfield shortly after the July 6 killing of Sonya Massey in her unincorporated Woodside Township home by a Sangamon County sheriff’s deputy. The former deputy, Sean Grayson, has been charged with Massey’s murder and is scheduled to go on trial in October in Peoria County.
“We have seen town hall-type meetings, such as the one being proposed, become volatile, such as what we saw with the listening session post the tragic death of Sonya Massey, thus leading to any positive outcome being lost,” Behl told Illinois Times.
The voucher program, funded with $50,000 from a state grant obtained for the city through the advocacy of state Sen. Doris Turner, D-Springfield, is affiliated with the nationwide “Lights On!” program.
That program – lightson.org – was developed in the wake of the 2016 killing of Philando Castile, a 32-year-old Black man shot during a traffic stop in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. Castile was shot by a police officer after the car he was driving was pulled over for a broken brake light.
The Lights On website says: “No one should have their life upended because of a lightbulb. We know that across many communities, a broken taillight or turn signal can trigger a chain reaction that could lead to destabilizing families.”
The program in Springfield will allow Springfield police officers, after checking with a supervisor, to dispense $250 vouchers rather than tickets so drivers can go to one of four local repair shops to fix things like rear tail lights or headlights that are out or broken.
“An individual who’s less fortunate than others may not be able to pay for a ticket, which could lead to a suspended license, which could ultimately lead to an arrest,” Behl said.
The new chief said his department “is committed to real, open discussions with our community members.” Behl said he was referring to meetings with stakeholders such as the ACLU, NAACP, Black Lives Matter SPI, Community Health Roundtable and the Springfield Coalition on Dismantling Racism.
“We are committed to ongoing dialogue, and the value of this is immeasurable,” Behl said.
ACLU of Illinois spokesperson Ed Yohnka told Illinois Times in fall 2024 that ACLU officials had begun talking with Springfield officials at that time about potential solutions and ways of easing unfair disparities.
Yohnka characterized the more cooperative relationship between the two sides as “the dawning of a new day” and “a real departure” from past reactions to the data that the ACLU received from Springfield and other Illinois cities with similar trends.
Springfield continues to be more progressive on this issue than most comparable or larger Illinois communities, Yohnka said June 11. “The things they’ve done are important steps forward,” he said.
But Behl and Scarlette, in a May interview before Scarlette retired, continued to defend the actions of police officers that showed, for example, Black drivers are almost six times more likely than whites to be stopped in 2023, based on data from the Illinois Department of Transportation.
Behl and Scarlette repeated what previous SPD leaders had said – the statistics reflect the fact that more patrol officers are deployed in high-crime neighborhoods, where residents tend to be poorer and drivers are disproportionately Black.
“What you’ve seen is where crime numbers indicate a higher propensity for violent crime and other activity, you see more police officers,” Scarlette said. “You see more proactive police officers who are over there and attempt to, again, rid the streets of illegal drugs and guns.”
Behl added in a more recent statement: “Our traffic enforcement is driven by traffic crash data, information and complaints provided to us by community members, council members and others. We assign our personnel in areas of the city with the highest calls for service and the areas with the most violent criminal activity.”
Page, however, said Scarlette and Behl’s explanations were “not adequate” to explain the disparities.
Behl said everyone in the approximately 250-member police department has received training and refresher training on unintentional bias, and ways of avoiding it affecting decisions, since 2022. The training was augmented with discussions among police and community members, and those discussions continue, he said.
“So we recognize that there’s bias,” Behl said. “There’s always going to be bias. Every single person has a bias. It’s whether we are acting on that bias when we are policing.”
Page said he appreciated the four meetings that ACLU officials have had with the police department. He likes the voucher program that is about to start, as well as the policy change for traffic stops involving requests for searches.
“They do acknowledge the numbers,” Page said.
In 2023, out of 11,516 traffic stops – a 54% increase since 2021 – 51% of the drivers involved were Black.
Black people make up 15% to 19.5% of the non-Hispanic population of Springfield and 11% to 12.5% of the non-Hispanic population of Sangamon County, according to various U.S. Census datasets.
This article appears in Juneteenth 2025.
