The Chicago Police Department has also been criticized for its liberal use of the controversial "stop-and-frisk" policy. For decades, the policy gave officers much more autonomy to conduct stops and pat-downs if there exists a reasonable suspicion that a suspect might be armed and dangerous. The ACLU has claimed that the policy unfairly targets African Americans, who accounted for nearly 75% of those stopped in 2014, even though they account for a third of the city's population. The Chicago Police Department confiscated almost 7,000 firearms in 2014, about 583 per month. The stop-and-frisk policy was largely abandoned by CPD in early 2016.