# Do cops really have ticket quotas? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 31, 2002, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-cops-really-have-ticket-quotas/145917 "2002-12-31T19:11:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Shoeless](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shoeless/32/7099_2.png) [@Shoeless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shoeless)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2010, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-cops-really-have-ticket-quotas/145917/41 "2010-08-23T16:50:00Z")
> [@Johanna](#): > > Seems to me the ticket-writing activity is stepped up near the end of each month, as officers hustle to rack up a higher total for the month. Each time I have been caught by a cop that seemingly pounces out of nowhere, for a silly little violation, it has been late in the month. Yeah, the most ridiculous ticket I ever got was not only on the last day of the month but also the last day of the quarter, so I’m convinced it had to be so the cop could fill his quota. He said I didn’t come to a complete stop at a stop sign. We’re not talking about a rolling stop here, where you’re foot barely touches the brake as you go through the intersection. Apparently the fact that I had slowed to maybe 1 or 2 mph, at an intersection where there were no other cars in sight, instead of coming to an absolute dead stop before proceeding was enough to get me slapped with a ticket. ---
**Author:** ![minlokwat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/minlokwat/32/2844_2.png) [@minlokwat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/minlokwat)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2010, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-cops-really-have-ticket-quotas/145917/42 "2010-08-23T16:54:37Z")
Why aren’t the cops (or other authorities) doing something about the zombies? That’s the real problem. It’s the zombies man, the ZOMBIES!! ---
**Author:** ![qpw3141](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/6bbea6/32.png) [@qpw3141](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/qpw3141)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2010, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-cops-really-have-ticket-quotas/145917/43 "2010-08-23T17:01:13Z")
> [@Una\_Persson](#): > > > [@qpw3141](#): > > > > Why the roll eyes? > > > > Of course it’s unfair to the poor. > > > > Do you think it isn’t or do you think it is and it doesn’t matter? > > Well gosh, let’s just say that pretty much all things which cost more than other things are “unfair to the poor.” It’s as unfair to the poor as getting a public defender instead of Johnny Cochran as your defense lawyer. Building permits are “unfair to the poor” because poor people can’t afford them as easily. Or dog licenses. Or property tax baseline levies. Or trash pickup. Or sales taxes. Or pretty much everything that costs money in exchange for goods and/or services. Yes, it’s fairly obviously the case that in terms of access to just about anything the poor are worse off than the rich. Non communists accept that because society seem to work a hell of a lot better that way. However, there are certain areas where that is not acceptable and the Law is one. Equal treatment under the law is a tenet that is held dear in any civilised society. Obviously it is never going to be an absolute because lawyers have to be paid for and those that can afford better lawyers have an advantage. That does not mean that the system itself should be specifically engineered so that people who can afford it can buy their way out of certain penalties that others cannot. It’s a matter of principle. You wouldn’t accept that as justice if it was applied to someone convicted of rape and I can see no reason why any other offence should be different. ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2010, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-cops-really-have-ticket-quotas/145917/44 "2010-08-23T17:26:43Z")
> [@hajario](#): > > Typically, they do not have quotas. They are, however, audited and questions will arise if one guy has written way less tickets than everyone else. Even though it was almost eight years ago, I am embarrassed that I screwed up the less/fewer thing. ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2010, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-cops-really-have-ticket-quotas/145917/45 "2010-08-23T18:25:46Z")
> [@qpw3141](#): > > In fact, they are probably worse because, not only are they not normally enforced, but they provide the opportunity for the legalised corruption of selective enforcement. Quite right. For some years, nearly 100% of the jaywalking tickets issued by the Minneapolis Police were in one location – on the street in front of the largest gay bar in the state, right across from a library parking lot that was open & free after the library closed. Gay bar customers parked there and were ticketed as they crossed the street to go to the bar. And only a few bigoted officers wrote all those tickets. ---
**Author:** ![qpw3141](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/6bbea6/32.png) [@qpw3141](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/qpw3141)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2010, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-cops-really-have-ticket-quotas/145917/46 "2010-08-23T18:38:15Z")
> [@t-bonham@scc.net](#): > > > [@qpw3141](#): > > > > In fact, they are probably worse because, not only are they not normally enforced, but they provide the opportunity for the legalised corruption of selective enforcement. > > Quite right. > For some years, nearly 100% of the jaywalking tickets issued by the Minneapolis Police were in one location – on the street in front of the largest gay bar in the state, right across from a library parking lot that was open & free after the library closed. Gay bar customers parked there and were ticketed as they crossed the street to go to the bar. And only a few bigoted officers wrote all those tickets. I always find it utterly weird that in a land that once characterised itself as ‘the land of the free’ you could actually be punished for crossing the street other than where someone told you you could. 😕 ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2010, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-cops-really-have-ticket-quotas/145917/47 "2010-08-23T18:43:45Z")
> [@Stormcrow](#): > > I’ve got a good friend who is a cop (actually now a detective) and this is what he has told me - at one point his supervisor/captain/whatever brought up his relatively low number of tickets. Not a quota, but definitely a measure of performance. Most jobs have similar performance measures. IRS auditors, for example. Years ago, as the new Treasurer for a non-profit organization, I was notified that we were being subjected to an IRS Audit. We had answers & documentation for most questions, but the auditor found one item that he thought was an error – he claimed that ads in our club newsletter were ‘unrelated business income’ and that we had to pay taxes on them. We appealed that to a senior auditor (there’s a specific IRS rule about it) and he agreed with us. He even mentioned that this auditor was newly hired, and worried about his review. IRS auditors are expected to find errors in many of their audits, because they aren’t done at random – the computer picks for auditing tax returns that set off some red flags to them. So you could say IRS Auditors have a quota, too. In the sense that auditors who regularly don’t find error might be questioned by their supervisors. ---
**Author:** ![cmkeller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmkeller/32/118_2.png) [@cmkeller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmkeller)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2010, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-cops-really-have-ticket-quotas/145917/48 "2010-08-23T18:55:43Z")
pkbites: > [@](#): > > 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. That small town wouldn’t be called “Ripon” by any chance, would it? ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2010, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-cops-really-have-ticket-quotas/145917/49 "2010-08-23T19:19:24Z")
As to the Linndale, Ohio speed trap, there was a bill introduced in the state legislature a few years ago to require that any municipality which patrolled a highway and earned traffic citation money from it, had to be able to access the highway without passing through another jurisdiction. This would’ve disqualified Linndale and no other Ohio town. The bill died in committee, alas. I don’t know why Cleveland, which surrounds Linndale, doesn’t post signs just on its side of the border in both directions reading, “Warning: Stringent traffic-enforcement zone ahead.” U.S. Grant and Winston Churchill are both often credited with saying, “The surest remedy for a bad law is its rigorous enforcement.” I’m sure it varies from department to department, but in my experience most cities’ police don’t have ticket quotas, but as noted earlier, it _is_ a metric that their police departments use for measuring the work output of their traffic-enforcement officers. Cold comfort, I know, if you were the guy who got the ticket. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-cops-really-have-ticket-quotas/145917.md?page=2)