Byron Lamb still has nightmares about the day he was hospitalized after being pulled over by the Chicago police.It was September 2018, and he was taking his two young children to his mother's house when officers pulled him over in West Pullman for allegedly running a stop sign.They ordered Lamb out. He refused. One of them then got inside his Buick sedan and shocked him with a Taser.“I was in my work uniform, I had a blue-collar shirt on,” Lamb says. “Just coming from work. A father coming to get his kids from school. They did all that in front of them babies.”Lamb, 34, was hospitalized, his car was impounded, and he was charged with resisting arrest. Two months later, prosecutors dropped the case.Every year, hundreds of thousands of people are pulled over by the Chicago Police Department. Between 2018 and 2024, what started as a stop for a traffic violation ended up sending civilians to the hospital with injuries suffered at the hands of police in 230 cases, an investigation by the Chicago Sun-Times and the Investigative Project on Race and Equity found. Related Chicago cops have been making fewer traffic stops, but more are ending in violence Most of the time, the drivers or passengers who were hospitalized were unarmed, according to police use-of-force data and court records. In some cases, they weren't charged with any crime, or the cases against them were dropped.Like Lamb, an overwhelming majority of them — 81% — were Black.Calls to overhaul Chicago police traffic-stop practices have intensified since a driver named Dexter Reed was killed in a shootout with officers who pulled him over on March 21, 2024.Police Supt. Larry Snelling has pushed to address the problem through the federal consent decree that City Hall agreed to following the fatal shooting by a cop in 2014 of Laquan McDonald on the Southwest Side.Still, records show, there was an increased use of force by police last year during traffic stops. Loren Jones, a lawyer who is director of Impact for Equity, an advocacy group, says every traffic stop amounts to "a traumatic experience.”"It’s scary, and it breaks down whatever trust is left in that community or with that person between them and police," Jones says.  Related Push to monitor Chicago police traffic stops under federal court order faces stiff resistance from community groups Chicago’s Black, Latino drivers targets of racially biased traffic stops, ACLU lawsuit alleges A 3-point plan to curb excessive traffic stops of Black, Brown drivers ‘Call the ambulance… I can’t f----- breathe.’Officers didn't tell Lamb why he was stopped before they took his license and ordered him out of his car. He was still behind the wheel when one of them stunned him with a Taser, according to police body-camera footage.The video shows Lamb screaming in pain and beginning to shake. One of his children is crying as officers take him away.“With my kids, with my kids, you’re gonna Tase me?” Lamb is heard saying in the video. “For what? What is the cause? Why am I getting pulled over?“Call the ambulance,” Lamb says to the officers. “I can’t f------ breathe, I’ve got asthma. … I don’t have weapons on me, I did nothing wrong."It wasn't until Lamb was in an ambulance on the way to Roseland Community Hospital that he was told he had been pulled over for blowing a stop sign. Lamb was charged with resisting arrest and given traffic citations. The charges were dropped two months later. A supervisor determined that Lamb hadn't been’t an “active resister" — a term the police use when civilians try to distance themselves from officers. According to departmental policy, cops are authorized to strike an "active resister" or use a Taser or pepper spray on them.Despite the supervisor's determination, the officer's use of force was found to have been "in compliance with" policy. The supervisor recommended that the officer “attend individualized training on force mitigation.”Police officials found that force was justifiable in about 90% of the traffic stops that left people injured and hospitalized. Officers’ force was deemed improper in seven cases.The vast majority of people who were hospitalized after traffic stops — 95% of them, including Lamb — suffered injuries classified as "nonfatal, minor."But Lamb says his encounter with the police left him with physical and emotional scars.“For them to do that in front of my kids, that really scared me,” Lamb says. “That messed me up. I still be having nightmares, and I get twitches. They shocked the hell out of me.”In some instances, the police listed an injury as “major,” as with Dexter Reed, 26, who was fatally shot after being pulled over in Humboldt Park on March 21, 2024. Authorities said Reed fired first, wounding an officer before being killed by police gunfire.In a traffic stop on Aug. 7, 2021, Officer Ella French and her partner, Officer Carlos Yanez, both were shot after pulling over a car with expired license plates. Emonte Morgan, the driver, refused to get out and then opened fire, killing French and wounding Yanez. Morgan was convicted last year of murder and given two life sentences. Slain Chicago police Officer Ella FrenchChicago Police Department Sometimes no charges, convictionsIn January 2019, Daniel Smith was charged with resisting arrest after he was pulled over in Englewood for illegally changing lanes, police records show.According to Smith, he’d been pulled over four or five times a month around that time and wasn’t surprised when he saw the squad car behind him that day.Smith, 56, says he’d made a proper left turn and that, when officers asked for his license, he told them: “Since I haven't done anything criminal, why are you asking for my license?"The cops opened the driver's-side door, tried to pull Smith out of the car and stunned him with a Taser, police records show. Smith says he yelled that his license was in his pocket but that an officer shocked him with a Taser.Smith — a military veteran who’s about 6-feet-4-inches tall and weighs 300 pounds — removed the prongs from his arm. The police then shocked him a second time, records show.With Taser prongs still attached to his body, Smith says he was handcuffed and placed in the back of a squad car, causing more pain because of his size and prior back injuries.“None of my conditions that I'm sharing with them mean anything because they are so used to dealing with people in a certain way,” says Smith, who is Black. “They stereotyped me, and they proceeded to deal with me in that manner.”Smith says officers kept him cuffed at the hospital, and a police report shows that a lieutenant interviewed him there without reading his rights. He was given three traffic citations and charged with resisting arrest. He says his case was dismissed after he completed an anger-management class.Many of the 230 people who were hospitalized for injuries suffered during traffic stops faced criminal charges. But Smith, Lamb and 37 others had their cases dropped, court records show. And 22 other people weren't chargedThe officers’ involved were found to be in compliance with department policy, and no additional training was recommended for them.“Here I am, left very empty and hurt that this had happened to me, and nothing was going to be done about it,” says Smith, who says he couldn’t find a lawyer who would sue the police department on his behalf. “It’s not sensational enough. … You’re just a big, Black dude, deal with it.”Scant research on those injured by policePolice reports and data don’t capture the extent or impact of these types of injuries on people and their communities, according to University of Illinois Chicago professor Lee Scott Friedman. There’s a growing amount of research on fatal police encounters, but Friedman says there needs to be a greater focus on the much larger number of people injured by cops. University of Illinois at Chicago professor Lee Scott Friedman. Joshua Clark/University of Illinois “We know barely anything about civilian injuries,” Friedman says. “You might have PTSD [or] longterm physical effects. You can have economic effects. You might have to move out of fear for your safety or for your family's safety.“You might have the feeling that you're being intimidated by law enforcement.”Contributing: Mohammad Samra Related Watchdog chief questions whether Chicago cops lied about why they stopped Dexter Reed before killing him in exchange of gunfire Before gunfight with Dexter Reed, Chicago cops made 50 traffic stops in just 3 days ...read more read less