Fake Traffic Stops by Police For Legal Black Gun Owners Hitting New Highs
By SDC News One Staff News Writers
CHICAGO [IFS] -- In American history, moments of legal clarity have often coincided with moral confusion. Rights written plainly on paper have repeatedly bent in practice when race, fear, and state power collide. For Black Americans who lawfully own firearms today, that collision is no longer theoretical. It is unfolding during traffic stops, inside booking rooms, and across criminal databases—quietly, bureaucratically, and with devastating effect.
What is emerging is not a new law, but a new pattern: legal gun ownership that becomes criminalized at the point of police discretion, disproportionately affecting Black citizens who have complied with every statutory requirement. Civil rights attorneys and researchers increasingly describe it as a paperwork trap—a system where legality exists only until an officer decides it does not.
A Familiar Pattern in a Modern Key
Chicago has become a focal point.
In case after case, Black drivers with valid Firearm Owner’s Identification (FOID) cards and Concealed Carry Licenses (CCL) are stopped for minor infractions—missing plates, cracked lights, routine traffic matters. What follows is almost ritualistic. The driver discloses a firearm, as required by law. The licenses are handed over. Calm compliance is visible on body-camera footage.
And then the pivot.
Officers claim they cannot verify the license in LEADS, Illinois’ law-enforcement database. Despite explicit Illinois State Police guidance instructing officers not to take enforcement action based solely on LEADS non-confirmation, felony arrests proceed anyway. Guns are seized. Charges are filed. Jail doors close.
In April 2025, Louis McWilliams became one of the clearest examples. Body-cam footage shows him immediately disclosing his firearm and presenting valid FOID and CCL cards. He was still arrested and charged with two felonies. He spent a day in jail. The charges were later dropped—but the arrest remains searchable, the mugshot permanent, the interruption to his life irreversible.
Illinois State Police bulletins issued in June 2025 explicitly state that FOID and CCL status can be verified through multiple methods: driver queries, name and date of birth, or card number. In other words, the system allows confirmation. The arrests occur not because verification is impossible, but because discretion overrides diligence.
Numbers, Incentives, and Race
CBS Chicago’s investigation revealed a racialized pattern that civil rights lawyers say echoes older enforcement models: policing strategies that convert minor encounters into serious charges through discretionary escalation. An internal source told reporters that some officers view weapons arrests—especially felony charges—as performance enhancers, a way to boost numbers even when cases collapse later.
Dropped charges do not undo the harm. Those arrested describe lost jobs, legal bills, online exposure, and the psychological shock of being treated as dangerous criminals while doing exactly what the law instructs.
This is why advocates insist these are not isolated errors. They are structural outcomes—predictable results of discretionary enforcement layered atop racial bias.
The Long Memory of Armed Black Citizenship
The policing of Black gun ownership has never been neutral.
In 1967, California passed the Mulford Act after armed Black Panther patrols monitored police behavior in Oakland. The law, supported by then-Governor Ronald Reagan, curtailed public carry—not because guns suddenly became dangerous, but because Black people were visibly exercising the right.
That logic never vanished. It adapted.
Today, organizations like the National African American Gun Association argue that modern enforcement continues this lineage: white gun ownership is presumed lawful until proven otherwise; Black gun ownership is presumed threatening until disproven—often too late.
Research supports the lived experience. A 2024 Johns Hopkins study found Black Americans disproportionately injured in both fatal and nonfatal police shootings. Qualitative studies reveal that many Black gun owners carry firearms not only out of fear of neighborhood violence, but out of fear of police encounters themselves—a paradox where self-defense increases perceived threat.
The Castile Line
Every contemporary case sits in the shadow of Philando Castile.
In 2016, Castile calmly informed a Minnesota officer that he was legally armed. He followed instructions. Within seconds, he was shot multiple times in front of his partner and a child. His death seared into collective memory the idea that compliance is not protection when racialized fear drives decision-making.
For Black gun owners, Castile was not an anomaly. He was confirmation.
Gun-rights groups that mobilize swiftly when white gun owners face overreach were noticeably muted then, reinforcing a growing belief that the Second Amendment is defended unevenly—robust in theory, selective in practice.
Lawful, Yet Vulnerable
Illinois law requires both FOID and CCL credentials for lawful vehicle carry, a regime courts have upheld. The Chicago cases are distinct precisely because those arrested had both licenses and still faced felony charges due to database issues or officer misinterpretation—actions directly contrary to state guidance.
The result is a legal twilight zone: rights exist, but enforcement erases them in real time.
Resistance Through Law, Not Violence
The response has been methodical, not militant.
Civil rights lawsuits seek damages and policy reform. Proposed legislation would bar arrests based solely on database mismatches when physical licenses appear valid. Advocacy groups expand “Know Your Rights” training while openly acknowledging a painful truth: no script, no tone, no compliance guarantees safety or fairness.
Legal experts still advise caution—visible hands, calm disclosure, meticulous documentation—not because it ensures justice, but because it preserves evidence when justice fails.
A Historical Warning
American history shows that repression does not always arrive with sirens or soldiers. Sometimes it comes as a checkbox left unchecked, a database query abandoned, a felony charge filed and later forgotten—except by the person who lived it.
For Black legal gun owners today, the danger is not the absence of law. It is the presence of law applied selectively, transforming rights into liabilities and paperwork into chains.
History teaches that when lawful citizens are treated as criminals for exercising constitutional rights, the issue is no longer about guns.
It is about whether the law still recognizes who it was written to protect—and who it silently permits to be sacrificed.
Black gun owners in Chicago charged with felonies despite valid FOID cards, CCLs; say they're traumatized
By Dorothy Tucker, Samah Assad
Updated on: October 20, 2025 / 7:29 AM CDT / CBS Chicago
An investigation by CBS News Chicago uncovered several times where police stopped Black gun owners for minor traffic violations and then charged them with felonies -- even though they had legal firearm licenses.
The findings prompted a rebuke from the National African American Gun Association. The ordeal also led to an exhausting toll and financial strain on the drivers. They had valid firearm licenses, but because of their arrests, spent months fighting to get charges dropped and expunged from their records.
Some have sued, or plan to sue Chicago police, accusing the department of violating their civil rights.
If you believe you were wrongly arrested despite having valid firearm licenses, tell us here or fill out the survey at the bottom of this story.
"My rights were violated"
One of those drivers is 46-year-old Louis McWilliams, a Tinley Park resident who owns a local cheesecake company, Ann's Flavored Cheesecakes. He was charged with a felony in April after being pulled over on Chicago's South Side on his way to a business meeting. The case was later dismissed.
"This has been very traumatic for me," McWilliams said. "I feel like my rights were violated."
When Chicago police stopped him on West 79th Street, they told him he had a missing front license plate, according to the arrest report. Police body camera video shows that after the police stopped him, the first thing he did was tell the officers he had a gun in the car.
According to Illinois state law, in order to legally carry a gun in your car, you need a Firearm Owner Identification (FOID) card and a concealed carry license (CCL). CBS News Chicago reviewed McWilliams' firearm license and confirmed it was valid.
The arrest report also acknowledged he was in possession of his card at the time of the stop. McWilliams can even be seen handing it to the officer in the video, and he said he was expecting that to be enough.
But it wasn't.
When an officer pulls over a driver, it's standard practice to check a database operated by the Illinois State Police, called LEADS. If the driver has a gun on them, or in the car, it's also common for officers to check LEADS to verify the FOID and CCL are valid. In McWilliams' case, the officer told him the CCL didn't appear on the database.
Police cited that as a justification for his arrest, and the Cook County State's Attorney's Office approved two felony charges: aggravated unlawful possession of a weapon, and unlawful use of a weapon.
"This shows that no matter how much you follow a system of which they create, they can still deem you wrong," McWilliams said. "I feel like that's unfair."
"I think they made a quick, hasty, improper decision on this case," said Irv Miller, CBS News Chicago's legal analyst. A former prosecutor once in charge of reviewing police cases, Miller also believes McWilliams never should have been charged.
"He showed [police] a valid CCL card," Miller said. "Not only did they see it, they actually took possession of it and inventoried it, gave it a Chicago Police Department inventory number, and sent it off to headquarters."
It's also unclear why the information was not in LEADS, or why the officers chose to arrest Williams. A spokesperson with the state police would not comment on specific cases but said if an officer is unable to check the status of a FOID or CCL in LEADS, "the officer should not take any law enforcement actions as it relates to a potential FOID/CCL violation."
CCL law in Illinois also indicates physical or digital cards are sufficient if a driver is stopped. The law does not specify that the information must also be in the state's system to be deemed valid.
"The statute says if you present to an officer a valid FOID card, and you also have a valid CCL, that means you're not in violation of the law if you're carrying a gun," Miller said.
CPD Supt. Larry Snelling declined to be interviewed for this story. A spokesperson for the department would not answer questions via email about the circumstances of McWilliams' arrest.
In the body camera video, an officer can be heard telling McWilliams that if further checks into his license came back clean, "Then they just let you go, apologize and let you go about your day." But that's not what happened. McWilliams spent a day in jail.
"It was just deplorable. There were a thousand-plus fruit flies flying around in every holding cell," he said. "There were roaches falling from the ceiling."
And immediately McWilliams felt the impact on his cheesecake business. He said he had a meeting related to his he day he was stopped. Because he was arrested, he couldn't make the meeting and said he lost a deal with a major franchise.
McWilliams also lost time. He spent months in court fighting to get the felony charges dismissed and his impounded car returned. It wasn't until mid-June, three months after he was arrested, that the charges were dropped.
There's still a long road ahead for McWilliams. He's working to get the charges expunged from his record, so they don't show up in a background check.
A pattern of accusations
It's nearly impossible to know how many drivers are wrongfully charged with unlawful gun possession, only to have the charges dismissed. Neither CPD nor the Cook County State's Attorney's Office track this specific data. But CBS News Chicago found three other cases, including two lawsuits, accusing police of violating the rights of legal gun owners in similar situations.
One of them was filed by Lucy Washington, a real estate agent and single mother of two who lives in Chicago. She told CBS News Chicago that she carries a gun for protection.
In December 2023, CPD stopped her for failing to use her turn signal. Within minutes of being stopped, Washington told the officers she's a gun owner with a CCL, body camera video of her arrest shows.
The officer told Washington that when police ran her information, the state database showed her CCL was expired. But Washington had just renewed it before she was stopped, according to records obtained by CBS News Chicago.
The video shows she tried several times to show police an email she received from state police explaining her pending CCL renewal. But the officers wouldn't accept it and arrested her anyway.
The Cook County State's Attorney's Office approved a felony charge of aggravated unlawful use of a weapon.
"I freaked out, especially when I was told that I was going to being charged with a felony," Washington said. "I was like, I can lose my broker license."
State law says if someone has submitted an application for renewal, they are eligible to possess a license. But a spokesperson for state police said CCL holders are not covered if they apply after their CCL expires. This is not outlined explicitly in state law, or communicated to the public by state police.
Washington said she had renewed two days after her CCL expired. State police wouldn't say whether they would add language in future correspondence to CCL holders clarifying this point.
Like McWilliams, Washington's felony charge was eventually dismissed. She also spent time and money on legal fees to get her case expunged.
"You're picking on somebody coming home from work or someone downtown enjoying our beautiful city, who isn't doing anything criminal, who isn't doing anything suspicious, and placing them in jail. And that's the problem. That's where the breakdown in trust comes," said Brandon Brown, Washington's attorney.
"This is a law-abiding citizen. This is a gainful member of our community. It interrupts and breaks down the trust between the community and law enforcement, which should be a concern of everyone."
Washington said she is still traumatized from what happened, and it's affected her real estate business.
"If you search a property that is in my name, my mugshot shows up next to it. It's embarrassing," Washington said. "How do I explain to someone, oh no, I was innocent?"
"Not again"
Phil Smith, founder and president of the National African American Gun Association, is seeing Black gun ownership rise across the country over the last several years.
In response to a heightened desire to protect themselves, he said, there's been an increase of members in his own group, which now has more than 50,000 people. The association provides training and education on gun ownership and has trained more than 15,000 people how to shoot in the last three years alone.
"They were just coming in starving for somebody, or some organization that fed that need of being, belonging, of them feeling comfortable," Smith said.
Smith said he was frustrated, but not surprised, to learn drivers in Chicago are being charged with felonies despite having valid firearm licenses.
"Outrage, anger, frustration, not again," Smith said. "Those are the conversations and statements that are going in my head when I hear about another Black person being stopped illegally, being arrested illegally, when they've had all their stuff together."
While there is no data that tracks race in these types of gun arrests, Smith referred to the history of Black people with guns being unjustly killed by police, including high profile cases like Philando Castile, Duante Wright and 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who was shot and killed by police while holding a toy gun.
"But if you look at other communities, they have firearms all over the place and it's OK," Smith said. "They walk in the store with them in open-carry cities. They go to Macy's. They go to Walmart. They go shoot and hunt, and it's OK."
Cook County State's Attorney Eileen O'Neill Burke declined to be interviewed for this story about her office's decision to approve charges against Washington and McWilliams. In a statement, a spokesperson said "the initial evidence at the time supported approval of felony charges." But they were dismissed because "additional information became available" in court, but they would not specify what that was.
The spokesperson also would not say what initial evidence was presented by police that supported approval of felony charges. Miller questioned why the assistant state's attorneys didn't investigate the police evidence further before approving the charges.
"It's frankly a legal tragedy when you put somebody through that, make that person spend 24 hours in jail, make this person hire a lawyer, make him sit with a felony case hanging over his head for two months," Miller said. "It's just not the way the system is supposed to work. Felony review should've weeded this case out at day one."
Smith urged Black gun owners who've gone through something similar to not feel discouraged from exercising their Second Amendment rights, and to take legal action if they feel they've been wrongfully arrested.
"We will not let someone tell us, or intimidate us, into not carrying a firearm," he said. "That's something that I refuse to accept."
Since his arrest, McWilliams has been struggling to rebuild his cheesecake business. He blames police for the setback and now plans to sue CPD.
"I just feel like the rights that I've been given, the constitutional rights to have [my firearm], that the police officers didn't stand up for," McWilliams said. "I didn't feel like they did their due diligence. They didn't do something to prove my innocence. It was just me being guilty."
Williams has not received his gun back from CPD. And despite a court order from a judge, neither has Washington.
She filed her own lawsuit in December 2024, accusing Chicago police of false arrest, illegal search and seizure, and intentional infliction of emotional distress, among other counts. Chicago Police declined to comment on Washington's arrest, citing pending litigation.
"I felt defeated, you know?" Washington said. "I felt defeated, and I felt like nobody had my back."
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