Illinois public college police pull over outsized number of Black drivers
Michael Burton sits for a portrait on the campus of Southern Illinois University where he is a student in the honors program, Monday, April 28, 2025 in Carbondale, Illinois. Burton was pulled over by campus police and had his car towed and impounded. (Julia Rendleman for the Investigative Project on Race and Equity)
By Maia McDonald, Nicole Jeanine Johnson and Khadija Ahmed for the Investigative Project on Race and Equity and Amilia Estrada for the Saluki Local Reporting Lab
Michael Burton was stopped by Southern Illinois University-Carbondale campus police so many times that he dreads driving anywhere near the college.
“Any time I got behind the wheel, I was getting pulled over,” said the 21-year-old junior from Austin.
He said he reached a breaking point in December 2023 while driving with friends — all of them, like Burton, 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 on Race and Equity obtained body camera footage of Burton’s encounter with the police. 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 jeans and a black hoodie, as one officer explains what he’s being cited for 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 face having a warrant issued for his arrest.
“We were sitting in the car for about 30 to 40 minutes-ish, and then the f - - - ing tow truck comes up,” he said.
In the video, Burton is seen scratching his goatee as the driver hooks up the SUV and a woman standing next to Burton reaches to hug him.
“Insane,” Burton said in an interview.
A first-generation college student, he said he had relied on his car to get to school and work, where he taught music at an early-childhood center. He said 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.
“Anytime I got behind the wheel, I was getting pulled over.”
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 the 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 said he knew the perils of driving as a Black driver. But, when he enrolled at SIU-Carbondale, he said he never expected campus police to be so harsh.
It’s a phenomenon seen at public universities across the state, according to a first-of-its-kind analysis of 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 the analysis of 33,388 traffic stops by police officers, covering the period from 2019 to 2023, at 11 Illinois public college campus police departments. 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 got a ticket rather than a spoken or written warning, compared 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, the share of stops involving Black drivers increased from 29% in 2019 to 34% in 2023. But Black students and Black adults account for far lower percentages of all students and adults at the universities and the communities surrounding them. And the share of white drivers stopped by campus police 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 findings are, “unfortunately, not surprising,” said Ed Yohnka, director of communications and public policy for the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinoi, who described them as “consistent with the kinds of reports we see from other communities across the state.”
This story was done in collaboration with Capital B News, WBEZ, Chicago Sun-Times, CU-CitizenAccess, Saluki Local Reporting Lab, and The Daily Egyptian.