Hazel Crest Village President Vernard Alsberry said traffic and parking policies and enforcement in Illinois are “not equitable” and unduly punish low-income residents. This often includes people who live in heavily Black and Hispanic neighborhoods.
According to ProPublica Illinois, Chicago files approximately 3 million tickets every year for parking, vehicle compliance, red light camera and other traffic violations. The average cost for a traffic ticket in the city is $25 for minor violations, such as a broken headlight. A $250 ticket could be for a parking ticket or towing fee.
Chicago can boot and impound any vehicle that is in violation of parking policies. The city can also suspend a driver’s license when the ticket is not paid after a certain time. The city will suspend a license if the vehicle owner has 10 unpaid parking tickets or five unpaid traffic camera tickets.
In 2016, Chicago asked the state to suspend the licenses of more than 21,000 drivers, triple that of 2010, ProPublica Illinois reports, according to the city’s finance department.
Alsberry said red light cameras are more about revenue for government than promoting safety for motorists.
“I’m not a big fan of it. We don’t have any red light [cameras] in Hazel Crest,” he said. “My brother visited me from Delaware, and he was driving my car in Chicago. He's going like 3 miles mph over the limit and I got a $100 ticket, because they had them set up in speed areas. And this is on a Saturday.
“I'm just not in favor of it. Used to be, you drive five miles an hour or whatever, police had the discretion of, ‘Hey, you know, you OK?’” Alsberry said. “Now it’s like everything is robotic. You know, you go 3 mph 5 mph, and they give you a ticket. It doesn’t make sense to me. I’m not in favor of it.”
The argument in favor of red light cameras is they are intended to promote safety and reduce traffic problems. Alsberry doesn’t buy that.
“It’s not to clean up traffic. I can’t believe it’s cleaning up traffic,” he said. After COVID-19, we had people driving really crazy. That’s been a problem throughout everywhere. All the mayors, we talk about how people are just driving like it’s no tomorrow. But these are people going 30, 40, 50 mph over the speed limit.
“Average guy, maybe late for work, is going 2-3 mph over the speed limit or 5 mph over the speed limit,” Alsberry said. “It just seems really heavy-handed to me.”
Previous reporting has highlighted the impact of the city’s aggressive ticketing regime, most notably in the form of hundreds of city cameras across the city, which generate tens of millions of dollars a year for City Hall.
Block Club Chicago says the cameras have come at a steep cost for motorists, particularly from the city’s Black and Latino neighborhoods. A ProPublica analysis of millions of citations found that between 2015-19, households in majority Black and Hispanic ZIP codes received tickets at around twice the rate of those in white areas.
Chicago ticket debt piles up disproportionately in the city’s low-income, mostly Black neighborhoods, research indicates. Eight of the 10 ZIP codes with the most ticket debt, per adult, are majority Black neighborhoods, according to a ProPublica analysis of ticket data in Illinois since 2007 and figures from the U.S. Census.
“I hate to say it, but we’re in the U.S.,” Alsberry said. “That's been a trend everywhere in poor communities. We get hit because people don’t just demonstrate or push back on that as much as other majority communities. And so you see people slide stuff like that and then we get it.”
He said it makes him think of toll roads, which offer discounts to people who use electronic passes paid in advance.
“You pay less than somebody who has to drive and get (there) because they can’t get I-PASS,” Alsberry said. “So they pay 25 cents more than you do. The system is not equitable in my opinion.”
Alsberry, 67, is in his third term. He was elected in April 2013 and re-elected in 2017 and 2021. Alsberry said he is barred from seeking a fourth term, although there has been talk of overturning that rule through a ballot measure.
He held the “Peace with a Purpose” workshop that brought local, county, state and federal elected officials together with citizens, educators, first responders and faith-based organizations to discuss education, safety and business developments.
Alsberry holds a bachelor’s degree in health administration and a master’s in public administration from Governors State University. He also earned associate of science degrees in physical therapy from the University of Mississippi and Community College of the Air Force.
Alsberry serves as the second vice president of the Illinois Municipal League. He is the past president (2016-18) and an executive board member of the South Suburban Mayors and Managers; co-chair of Advocate South Suburban Hospital Governing Council; an executive board member of South Suburban United Way; founder of the Southland Partnership; a board member of the Metropolitan Mayors Caucus; the past president and an executive board member of the Southland Regional Mayoral Black Caucus; an executive board member of the Southland Development Authority; and vice president of the South Suburban Land Band and Development Authority.
Also, Alsberry is a board member of the Southland Chamber of Commerce, a member of the American Legion Post 398 in Hazel Crest, and a U.S. Air Force veteran, serving for 9 1/2 years.