In another thread, When Cops Lie, Monty said :
“I’m curious as to why there’s such a widespread belief that traffic cops have a quota to fill. Most police officers of my acquaintance have never worked in a jurisdiction which has that”
I’m not sure how close an aquaintence these police are, close enough to admit to a crime? Officially every police force is against quotas saying they are illegal. There seems to be in some juristictions though a de facto quota by requiring officers to reproduce/exceed past ticket issuances or maintain averages.
So how widespread is the problem? If it’s illegal has anyone ever been charged with anything or legally forced to desist. Anyone from Portland recall any noise about this? Should I be disregarded as a conspiracy theorist?
Well, I know several RCMP members and I can attest that in many conversations with them they have all stated there are no “quotas” that they have ever had to fill and have never heard of a real case.
However, they are human beings and if somone is in a particularily shitty mood you may get pulled over and ticketed for an offense they might have otherwise let slide.
Of course, small county sheriff dept in say, Louisiana that may have traffic offenses as a major source of income may have a different outlook on this.
I’m at a loss for sources, but maybe this will spark a memory in other dopers. It was probably in the Boston Herald. In Massachusetts, several memos have surfaced over the years from various Troops regarding the number of tickets written. Now, they’re careful not to mention quotas, but it’s clear that there’s an expectation troopers will maintain a minimum standard in order to advance within the department and land cushy details. There was even mention of disciplinary action for troopers who “underperformed” when their numbers where compared to others. One memo in particular stressed the need to increase ticket volume over a short period. I can’t remember what the reason was.
I live in a fairly small city near Oklahoma City… The police here have “unofficial” quotas for traffic tickets. And, interestingly, something like 65% of all traffic tickets are written after the 15th of every month… IOW, the police start cracking down more the closer it gets to the end of the month when the quotas are due
Monty, obviously that is not what I’m saying. All I showed was some links to articles claiming to have memos and confidential police officer statements that a de facto quota system is in place.
If a cop has to give out a certain number of tickets per month is it fine as long as they don’t say “We’ve got an illegal quota system here”?
In high school an officer from our regional force (Durham Region - just outside Toronto) came in to field questions from the pupils. He was asked this and he said that officially there was no quota… but unofficially they were expected to get a certain number of tickets and if you didn’t you would be questioned about it.
I had a close friend who was a cop. He had two standard answers when acused of being on quota.
[ul]
[li]“No I don’t have a quota, I can write as many as I want.”[/li][li]“yep sure do, two more and my wife gets a new toaster.”[/li][/ul]
The force needs some way to determine that an officer isn’t just hanging in the Donut shop all day. So records of arrests, citations, and such are no doubt compared at a management level. If an officer is consistently low, he’d probably have to answer questions about it.
That’s not a ‘quota’, but it does put someone under a bit of pressure to do something if through luck or laziness they hadn’t done very much in the first half of the month.
I asked this question to a cop that I met one time. He said that there was no official quota but if a cop had numbers that were much less than his brethren, he’d be talked to by his boss about his work ethic.
I work very closely with the town police department … close enough that I’m temporarily deputized from time to time.
There is no ticket quota. None. Raising revenue from tickets would be a tedious process, because there would be very little “profit” after you consider time the officer and court system spend processing the violation.
LOTS of tickets are issued, though, because there is a lot of dump truck traffic. Dump truck drivers get paid by the load, which is a huge inducement to speed. Dump trucks are dangerous vehicles, often driven by dangerous methed-up mulletheads, and the body count of innocent car drivers is pretty high.
It’s a small town with a lot of traffic, so there is ample opportunity to confisgate a vehicle used for a major drug shipments. Drug dealers are smart, though, and will usually use rental vehicles or stolen cars for cross-country shipment; the vehicles are always returned to the owner. Our town lot isn’t overflowing with confisgated vehicles; if one does show up, it’s usually some late '70s compact on its last legs.
Most PD revenue comes from a municipality’s general fund, and any grants the PD may get.
when I was a full-time patrolman for a small town in s.e. Wisconsin, we had a quota. It was even mandated in the departments official written policies. officers were expected to average 1 citation for every 17 hours worked. Where they came up with thatnumber I’ll never know.
Occassionally I still work part-time for a local department (it’s hard to give up the badge totally, folks:D). Not only does this department NOT have a quota, the captain get’s shitty with you if you go out and write too many tickets. This particular department is in a “tourist trap” area, however, which is why they don’t want a bunch of hard ass cops writing up everyone.
As a side note, the Wisconsin state Legislature outlawed ticket quotas a few years ago. This was done at the lobbying of the State Troopers Association. The troopers didn’t like having their jobs at risk over writing too few tickets.
Many years ago I worked writing parking tickets in a medium-sized town in PA. (The worst job I ever had. If you do your job well, people hate you, if you don’t, then you catch heck. Thank goodness those days are over.) There were no quotas as such.
However, one of the few ways to determine if a man is doing his job is by checking the amount of tickets that he writes compared to other men on that beat. If it significantly lower, than he is probably spending a lot of time in the coffee shop.
A person is expected to do the job he is paid to do. If he has one “off” day, no one thinks anything of it. If he has many days that are considered to be low, then someone in management speaks to him about it. Is this a quota?
To my mind if he is expected to keep up with his brethren officers on an ongoing basis that is not a quota(i.e “Yesterday Bill got twice as many tickets as you working that speed trap”). If he is expected to match past years/months ticket levels then it is a quota(i.e “Through 95-01 we averaged 30 citations/day we expect the same this year”). Otherwise you are not allowing for fluctuations in the ticketable offence and have a de facto quota system.
