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WINSTON-SALEM — The Winston-Salem Police Department, in response to complaints from the American Civil Liberties Union about driver's license checkpoints around the city, has revised its checkpoint policy, Police Chief Scott Cunningham told a Winston-Salem City Council committee on Monday night.

The policy changes were made in answer to requests from the ACLU, Cunningham told the council's Public Safety Committee.

Police checkpoints now require approval from an officer with the rank of lieutenant or higher. The department also created new forms to gather data on checkpoints; those forms include the location of the checkpoint, the purpose of the checkpoint, and information about citations written or arrests made.

Previously, Cunningham said, police did not collect data the same way at each checkpoint, which made the data inaccurate.

"We take full responsibility for that," Cunningham said. "We could have done better."

Data collected at checkpoints became a central issue for the ACLU and the NAACP last year, after a police review showed that 85 percent of the 244 traffic checkpoints set up by Winston-Salem police in an 11-month period happened in predominantly minority areas.

The ACLU also had asked the police department to conduct checkpoints equally across the city. Cunningham said state law would not permit the department to do that.

The ACLU compared the police department's data -- which Cunningham said was inaccurate -- with U.S. Census Bureau information. The census shows where people of different races, ethnicities, and income levels live.

"Census tracts are virtually irrelevant to police department work," Cunningham said.

Council member James Taylor, who represents the city's Southeast Ward -- which includes many of the areas the ACLU was concerned about -- said the policy changes were "a good compromise."

Raul Pinto, an attorney and racial justice fellow with the ACLU of North Carolina, said he, too, was pleased with the department's changes.

"I think the measures ... proposed by the police chief are a great step forward to solving the problem," Pinto said. He encouraged the city to be transparent with the data collected during the checkpoints and to have an outside entity to audit the new processes.

"What better auditor than the public itself?" Pinto asked.

Cunningham said he would report back to the committee on the policy changes in three months.