Why you should hope that’s a Rockton officer pulling you over

August 4th, 2008 at 12:05pm Alex Gary

Last week the Illinois Department of Transportation released its annual traffic stop data. The state has been collecting it since 2004 mostly to track whether certain departments are guilty of racial profiling when pulling someone over.

There’s a wealth of other information in there, though. One I thought was very interesting was the wide disparity in citation percentages. Not including the Illinois State Police, last year nineteen different police agencies in Boone, Ogle, Stephenson and Winnebago counties pulled over more than 500 motorists.

If you were unfortunate enough to be pulled over by a Winnebago County Sheriff’s Deputy, 86.8 percent of the time you received a citation. At the bottom end of the scale was the Rochelle Police Department. Out of the 1,507 motorists pulled over in Rochelle, only 601 — or 39.9 percent received citations.

There were strange disparities in several areas. Rockton, Roscoe and South Beloit are so intertwined that you can think you are in one town and actually be in another. If you are traveling on one of those in between roads and the lights go off behind you, according to the 2007 data, you should pray it’s a Rockton officer. Last year, Rockton officers gave tickets in just 51.1 percent of its traffic stops while South Beloit officers ticketed drivers 72.3 percent of the time and Roscoe officers issued citations 74.4 of the time.

The same issue pops up between Loves Park and Machesney Park. Machesney Park pays Winnebago County — and its 86.8 percent citation rate — to patrol its streets, while Loves Park has its own department and officers there ticketed drivers just 53.8 percent of the time.

There even was variation with the four sheriff’s departments. Stephenson County’s citation percentage was 82.7 percent and Boone County was 81.4 percent. But Ogle County deputies issued citations in just 1,157 of their 2,053 traffic stops — or 56.4 percent.

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