Black and brown communities have been disproportionately affected by Chicago's ticketing policy, and some have lost their ability to work, and one business owner in the city says this is a wrong policy.

The city of Chicago has a policy that is affecting ride-share drivers by taking away their ability to work through deactivation from unpaid traffic tickets. Sec. 54-391 of the Cook County Code of Ordinances states, "The license of any person who has failed to pay any fine, assessment of costs or other sums of money owed to the County pursuant to an order of the Department of Revenue, an order of the Department of Administrative Hearings or a court order, by the due date indicated in the order, or within 30 calendar days of becoming a debt due and owing may be suspended by the Department of Revenue, in accordance with its rules and after affording a hearing. The license shall be suspended until such time that the fine, assessment of costs or other sums of money has been fully paid."

Larry Roberts Jr., founder of Larry's Barber College, which has seven locations, says he believes the ticketing policy is "a problem."

"Basically, it's hurting us... The red light cameras--people don't know whether to stop or whether to keep going," Roberts said. 

"I feel like if they make it where if you get your license revoked... if you get too many tickets, you can't drive and you got to pay this money...I mean, what do you do... you can't go to work," Roberts said. 

"It's already hard enough to live because people aren't making enough money to be able to survive," Roberts said. "But then when you add the ticket on top of it, it's just really bad---that's my take on it," Roberts said, adding he just does everything he's supposed to do, including putting money in the parking meters. 

Roberts said he has noticed the red light cameras are in the black and brown communities more so than in affluent areas.

"Yes, they are," he said, adding that he noticed they are being installed where they are not noticed by people. 

"I noticed the other day they try and put them in areas where people can't see, like the ones that snap you if you're going in a 30-mile-per-hour zone, and if you go past 30 miles per hour, it's like when you were turning from a light and then...if you pull it out from a light and you might speed off. Well, they got it where when you speed off, you almost automatically get caught by this camera if you don't know it."

A 2018 ProPublica Illinois report showed that the City of Chicago issues more than 3 million tickets each year for a wide range of parking, vehicle compliance, and automated traffic camera violations. Average ticket costs range from $25 citations for broken headlights, to $250 tickets for parking in a disabled zone. Chicago ticket debt piles up disproportionately in the city’s low-income, mostly black neighborhoods. 

Eight of the 10 ZIP codes with the most accumulated ticket debt per adult are majority black, according to a ProPublica analysis of ticket data in Illinois since 2007 and figures from the U.S. Census. The City of Chicago not only has the ability to boot and impound vehicles, but it can also move to suspend drivers' licenses after an accumulation of 10 unpaid parking tickets or 5 unpaid traffic camera tickets.

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. It is noted that a ProPublica analysis of millions of citations found that between 2015 and 2019, households in majority Black and Hispanic ZIP codes received tickets at around twice the rate of those in white areas.

Other reports in the Southland Marquee also show how Uber drivers were punished by the city's policy and their right to make money was taken away.