This question primarily concerns cops in Los Angeles, but I guess it applies to cops in all cities - is there really a quota that cops have to meet in terms of number of tickets given?
I recently got what has to be the stupidest ticket ever - using the freeway onramp carpool lane without a passenger. Now, I admit to doing it and I’m not even mad that I got a ticket for it. What pisses me off is how I got the ticket.
The onramp I was using is on an incline and it’s pretty long, so you can’t see where it meets the actual freeway from the bottom of it. I swung into the carpool lane and after reaching the top, drove by THREE cops who were all just sitting there waiting for people to make just such a mistake. One flashed her lights and gave me a $212 ticket for my trouble.
Of course, there’s no way to prove it, but if there were, I would be willing to bet a large amount of money that somewhere in Los Angeles, there was a crime going down that was a lot more serious than using the onramp carpool lane (which is even LESS severe than using the carpool lane on the freeway proper without a passenger). I never wanted to believe that cops gave out BS tickets because of quotas, but I can’t think of any other reason why there were so many of them just wasting their time busting people for using the carpool lane.
I’d like for people to tell me it’s not true - there was some other reason they were camping out up there, but I can’t say I’ll be shocked to hear that it is true. I’ll certainly be dismayed though…
My ex-fiancee was the office manager/purchasing agent for one of the nearby police departments. I asked her this question. Her answer was that, no, there is officially no quota for how many tickets they have to write. However, they do keep track and it is used as a performance measure. At that particular department, it was used as a basis for handing out cars. The office who wrote the most tickets got the newest car with all the gadgets, the low-writers got the hooptys that smelled like puke. They drive their cars home and many of them use them as personal transportation and thereby save a lot of money on what is an already small salary, so it was a considerable motivator.
My understanding is that they do not have official quotas, and police spokesmen bristle at the question and emphatically deny that there are quotas–but in reality, they have de facto quotas.
You’ve never before seen gangs of cops operating speed traps (or some similar traffic offense)? It’s pretty common. A 1/2-dozen or so patrol cars blanket a small zone, and just issue citations pretty much non-stop. Sometimes on the highway for speeding, sometimes in the middle of the city.
I got the only moving violation I’ve ever received in more than 20 years driving, in a trap that caught people making illegal left turns at a certain intersection. There were 4 other cars waved down for the same thing before my cop even finished writing me up.
I don’t think it’s about quotas per se. More likely a department has a certain number of cops assigned to traffic control, and occasionally they work cooperatively rather than singly. Or maybe making a big showy presence in a area where the residents have put in a lot of complaints.
If there were several officers waiting for someone like you to come along and make that mistake, it’s possible they have been having problems with people using the carpool lane without multiple passengers. When something becomes a problem (even such a small thing) cops will take a day to focus on such a thing.
For example - seatbelts. Most cops won’t even pay attention to whether you are wearing a seatbelt. But one week the Lt. might tell the boys to start cracking down on seatbelts. Then, the same officers who normally never cared about such a thing will start keeping their eyes out. All the motorists will think the cop who wrote a seatbelt ticket is just an ass or filling quotas.
After a week or so of cracking down on seatbelts (or whatever) things go back to normal and officers get back in their normal routine of ignoring it. Eventually it becomes a problem again and the cycle repeats.
The fact that other crimes were occuring elsewhere in the city is irrelavant. A police department must provide a full spectrum of law enforcement. I am sure LAPD has enough cops that they can spare 2 or 3 to crack down on the carpool lane once and a while.
If the police do have a quota for traffic officers to fill it doesn’t look to me like the officers would have a lot of trouble reaching the minimum however high it might be.
Since LAPD does not rotinuely patrol the freeways, I am guessing that your comment about crime elsewhere in LA is not applicable. The California Hiway patrol patrols the freeways.
One thing about traffic tickets - they can represent a huge source of easy money for a city government.
My town (a suburb of Kansas City) is frighteningly open about this. If the city is running low on money, they outright announce that the traffic cops will be out in force and have zero tolerance for anything. Speeding tickets for going 57 in a 55 zone during these “green periods” are not uncommon.
The most blatantly greedy aspect of all this is their policy to let you “buy your way out” of a ticket. If you pay double (or sometimes triple) the fine, the city will look the other way and pretend your moving violation never happened. This means your insurance won’t go up and your license won’t get taken away, but when the fines are already in the $200 range, it’s not exactly cheap.
What ever happened to quality vs. quantity? The cops’ superiors don’t care what kind of tickets they give to people, they only care that their cops give out a lot of them? That’s ridiculous, and makes me lose respect for them, even if there aren’t quotas. Because, basically, I’m gonna have to always be paranoid about stupid crap like using the carpool lane when the a-holes doing 90 and zig-zagging through traffic probably won’t get pulled over because all the lazy cops are handing out carpool lane violations.
I know that this is probably a tired rant, but this kind of thing really irritates me. This is the only ticket I’ve ever gotten in nine years of driving. To say it ruins my otherwise sterling record is petty, but it only goes to point out that traffic cops need to get their priorities in order. I’d say one abolsutely minor ticket in nine years qualifies me as a safe driver. I think I have a right to be pissed off at how many real traffic violations I see everyday that get ignored and I also think the cops need to seriously analyze who needs to be pulled over and who doesn’t.
The snazziest car?! What are they, six year olds? Is doing their job well really less important than not being the one to drive the new vroom-vroom? Respect dropping…
Sorry if this post went outside the normal bounds of question and answer format, but I had to get that off my chest.
Also, I understand that there are good cops out there and I’m not saying I hate the police.
Ok, you’re right…but still. They can’t really be pleased with themselves going in at the end of the day having handed out a stackful of carpool lane violations. The CHP needs to re-evaulate things…
21Twelve, go take a look at Badge’s “ask the cop” thread… I think this was covered in there (among other places). There’s a bunch of interesting Q&A about cops, procedures, and attitudes in there.
I live in a suburb of Kansas City as well. Missouri side actually, not sure of how things are in Kansas.
I agree about the green periods statements, but I would like to point out that the 'looking away" statement is bs. The police nor the city have that sort of power, unless you pay the cop itself, in which case it is bribery.
That said, the easy way to get out of a moving violation, and keep it off your record and keep your insurance from going up, say with a speeding ticket is to hire a lawyer. The lawyer usually pleads a mechanical failure or some such, and the moving violation is moved to a non-moving violation, though the result is that the “fine” for faulty equipment is generally higher.
This isn’t the same as looking the other way though. It is a loophole that the lawyers use to help you, not make more money for the city. A bit of a nitpick, sorry.
“I don’t have a quota. I can write as many as I want”.
That’s a common smart-ass remark we used to use.
Anyway, when I was on the job full time for a small city in Wisconsin, not only did we have a quota, is was stated so in the departments written policies. We had to average 1 violation citation every 17 working hours. Where they came up with that amount I know not.
After changing careers I found I couldn’t completely give up the badge, so I took a part-time gig with a local department. Not only do we NOT have quotas, if we write too many we actually get a talking to by the inspector. He wants to make sure we’re writing for flagerant violations and not just out “bounty hunting”.
A few years ago Wisconsin passed a law against police ticket quotas anyway.
IIRC there was a case of a Chigaco cop who ticketed names from the local cemetary to fill his quota. he got fired. He sued. The Supreme court ruled quotas unconstitutional. Maybe just a story I heard.
Here in TN on the interstates, cops will work in pairs, one pointed at one side of the interstate, the other at the other side. Tickets galore.
Did you try asking the officer “Why aren’t you out there catching real criminals?” Often times this will cause a reality check on the part of the law enforcement agent, who will then apologize to you, tear up the citation and take off in search of bigger prey.
I just asked my friend who is a Kansas City MO officer this question and he said there is no quota. He said he hasn’t even checked out a radar gun in years. The only traffic tickets he writes are for accidents or for car thieves who run and rack up many moving violations before crashing or giving up.
Here in central Ohio, we have New Rome. Entertain yourself with a Google for “new rome ohio” and read all about it.
I don’t know if these assholes have quotas or not, but we’re talking about a village of roughly sixty residents, over a quarter of whom serve on the PD, that generates over $400,000 a year from traffic tickets on a 1,000-foot-long stretch of U.S. 40.
