In Chicago, a controversy that has persisted for over a decade has resurfaced, with individuals across the city demanding accountability. Many drivers of color have stepped forward, filing lawsuits and alleging that they were victims of pretextual traffic stops. These stops, they claim, were merely a guise for searches probing into unrelated criminal activities rather than the supposed traffic violations for which they were initially pulled over.
Particularly under scrutiny is the 1863 tactical team operating on the city’s near north side. According to Chicago’s police oversight agency, this team has accumulated the highest number of misconduct complaints related to such enforcement tactics compared to any other unit.
An extensive investigation by the ABC7 I-Team, spanning an entire year, has shed light on the situation. Delving into court documents and public records, they discovered significant shifts within the eight-member 1863 tactical team. Four of its members have been stripped of their police powers, while two others, including the team’s sergeant, have been reassigned to different areas within the city. Currently, only two members remain active in the 18th District.
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The Chicago Police Department has confirmed these personnel changes, reflecting a notable response to the ongoing concerns.
The 18th Police District, which encompasses a significant portion of the Near North Side, includes neighborhoods such as Lincoln Park, Old Town, Gold Coast, Mag Mile, River North, River East, and Streeterville.
For many drivers, the experience of being momentarily detained while members of the 1863 tactical team conducted searches on their bodies and vehicles is a memory that continues to resonate deeply.
“I was just terrified,” said Limorris Bell, who sued members of the team after a 2024 stop-turned-search in the Gold Coast neighborhood.
Investigators for the Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA) recently concluded the search of Bell and his vehicle “constituted misconduct,” according to an investigation report reviewed by the I-Team.
Another driver, Desmen Northington, also sued the city, arguing his stop-turned-search in 2024 was targeted.
“I felt like I was profiled,” Northington said. “I’m young, I’m African American.”
The 1863 tactical team in the 18th district is made up of seven officers and a sergeant. Members on the team have been named in more than 100 misconduct complaints, more than any other officers in the department, according to a COPA memo sent to Police Superintendent Larry Snelling last fall.
Civil rights attorney Jordan Marsh represents 12 people who have sued the city over 1863 stops.
“We have officers who are pulling over and harassing almost exclusively African American citizens,” Marsh told the I-Team. “Almost exclusively based on pretext.”
Costs to the city and taxpayers are growing.
The I-Team found 23 federal civil rights lawsuits naming 1863 officers have been filed in the last five years, 14 of those lawsuits were filed last year alone. So far, eight have been settled for payouts totaling $360,000.
One of those pending lawsuits filed by Marsh last October states, “Defendants [Officer JOSEPH] Vecchio, [Nicu] Tohatan, and [Mario] Fuentes have been relieved of their police powers due to multiple investigations into serious allegations of police misconduct.”
The I-Team has learned those three 1863 members, as well as a fourth, Officer Michael Donnelly, who is also named in six pending lawsuits, all were relieved of police powers last year, meaning they had to surrender their service weapon and badge.
A CPD assignment chart obtained through a public record request also shows the officers assigned to the department’s Alternate Response Section, the equivalent of desk duty.
According to a CPD spokesperson, the department does “not confirm specifics of why a member was relieved of powers due to a pending investigation.”
The I-Team contacted all four officers and their attorneys for comment, but they did not respond.
In addition, the team’s sergeant and another officer have also been removed from the 1863 tactical team, leaving only two members of the eight-person team still working in the 18th district.
The city’s Department of Law declined to comment citing pending litigation.
In responses to those lawsuits filed with the court, the city and officers have repeatedly denied all allegations of wrongdoing.
‘Misconduct hotspots’
As the I-Team has previously reported, the problem of stops-turned-searches, or as attorneys have labeled the “new stop-and-frisk,” dates back to 2016 in the city, when the Chicago police department agreed to limit its searches of pedestrians walking in certain parts of the city.
For the past year, Superintendent Snelling and city leaders have been collaborating on a new traffic stop policy that could include new restrictions on when officers can search vehicles.
The department says it’s continuing to work with city leaders, and the state Attorney General’s office on this policy, but there’s no timeline for when it could go into effect.
Transparency surrounding all police misconduct has been a priority for Chicago’s outgoing Inspector General Deborah Witzburg, and it’s at the core of a new public dashboard her team recently published.
“I’m firmly of the belief that information about the government belongs to the governed,” Witzburg told the I-Team.
While data on police misconduct complaints has been made public since 2014, the Inspector General’s new “Public Safety Complaint Network” dashboard displays relationships among individual CPD members who are accused of misconduct together.
“What this new dashboard does is it demonstrates in a kind of social network analysis, it looks like a spider web,” Witzburg said. “It shows members of the police department who are co-accused with other members.”
To view the IG’s new dashboard, click here.
“Any student of Chicago police history in the last couple of generations, you know, knows the stories of the Watts crew and the Burge crew and the Guevera crew and others,” Witzburg said. “And we know from all of those stories that it has long been the case that in a department where a great deal of good and honorable work is done every day, there are these clusters of members who contribute more than their fair share of misconduct.”
Case in point, lawsuits related to alleged misconduct from those three former CPD members – Guevera, Burge and Watts — continue to grow.
Just on Wednesday, the Chicago City Council approved several lawsuit settlements totaling $29.2 million tied to former Detective Reynaldo Guevera. That’s on top of approving a $17 million settlement tied to a misconduct lawsuit last year.
Inspector General Witzburg told the I-Team the goal with this new dashboard is to identify misconduct clusters before they snowball.
“What kind of emerges from this web, from this social network analysis, are these misconduct hotspots around the department,” Witzburg explained.
The I-Team found members of the 1863 team top the IG’s list of officers with the most complaints, and when you isolate them in the large web of CPD members, the team create’s one of those hotspots.
“What those patterns mean is that certain pairs of people, groups of people are getting in trouble together a lot,” Witzburg told the I-Team. “And that’s something that bears some exact examination.”
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