More than half of 'suspicious activity reports' targeted Arabs and Muslims in Chicago

The Arab community is demanding an end to racial profiling after it was revealed that over 50 percent of "suspects" reported to the police, primarily for doing mundane things like texting or taking photos, were described as people of Arab descent in Chicago.

A few years ago, members of the Arab American Action Network (AAAN) started talking with members of the Chicago community about their experiences with law enforcement in the suburbs and in the city of Chicago. They began to collect stories and found that everyone had one to share: the mother of Muhammad Sankari, the lead organizer at AAAN, had been harassed. Sankari’s father's store was visited by law enforcement. And the stories went on.

So, AAAN obtained 235 “Suspicious Activity Reports” (SARs) through the Freedom of Information Act. The reports were made between 2016 and 2020 by the Chicago Police Department and Illinois State Police.

SARs are the documents produced by, “If You See Something, Say Something” - a campaign by the Department of Homeland Security that encourages people to report suspicious activity to their local law enforcement.

In the reports obtained by AAAN, 50 percent of SARs from the Chicago Police Department and 67 perecnt of SARs from the Statewide Terrorism Intelligence Center (STIC) with the Illinois State Police, included racial, ethnic or religious descriptions of the suspects.

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