do cops actually have "quotas"?

[Homerboy]

 

[jlbenedict]

I've always thought that it wasn't the cops that have the quotas, but mainly the state governments that have quotas, since the funds derived from ticketing go toward "revenue"

Or am I tin-foiling much?

 

[HombrePequeno]

Not that I know of. My step-dad is a police officer and I have never heard him say anything about quotas.

 

[MrPickins]

I was under the impression that quotas for officers wasn't legal.

 

[Hyperlite]

i doubt it, we just like to blame it on that.

 

[mordantmonkey]

I don't think they have quotas, per se. But there is an expectation from superiors that if a traffic cop is doing his job he should have a certain minimum of tickets issued. I mean it's not like there aren't plenty of people breaking traffic laws.

 

[Scarpozzi]

Actually, they ran a story on this in local news a year or so ago. The police chief was questioned about quotas. He said that they do not have quotas. However, they do offer bonuses for officers that have a certain number of successful traffic citations per month. (to clean up the streets and line the city's pockets...)

So the answer to your question, yes....quotas exist. The powers that be may not ackowledge it, but it is an active motivation for many officers since most don't like to write tickets.

 

[mordantmonkey]

 

[lokiju]

My uncle who his a county sheriff office says no.

 

[nakedfrog]

One of my former co-workers has a brother in law who is a cop, and he says they don't have quotas, but they do get rewards.

 

[Modular]

Yes, yes they do. A closr friend just got on the force and he was saying that they even have monthly contensts between the officers. Mostly for DUI's and such. The contests aren't sanctioned by the station on paper, but the guy with the most DUI's traffic tickets does get his picture on the wall and gets a bonus every month...

 

[BrunoPuntzJones]

Yeah the Texas DPS fired like 8 troopers in this area over the past couple of months for lying on their "quota" sheets. They are expected to have a certain amount of stops/tickets per shift.

What these guys were doing was making say 16 stops a shift one day, then 0 the next and changing the dates to reflect 8 stops on both days, thus meeting their quota.

Apparently a common practice (though my example are just numbers out of my ass, more like fudging one or two tickets), but higher-ups were getting hassled over it so instead of owning up to it they just fired the troopers.

 

[Vic]

Most police don't have quotas per se, but they do have performance standards just like any other job, which essentially adds up to the same thing.

 

[swtethan]

ever play that arcade game... APB? where youre driving around in a cop car trying to meet your quota?

 

[Demon-Xanth]

They don't have quotas per se...

...but in California if the local police don't make as much revenue as they did in a certain year the area has to cover the difference in taxes.
Also, if a cop isn't writing tickets, just what exactly were they doing? It comes down to a justify your job to your boss thing. If a salesman isn't bringing in sales, are they really trying? If a cop isn't writing tickets, are they really enforcing laws?

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Originally posted by: Vic
Most police don't have quotas per se, but they do have performance standards just like any other job, which essentially adds up to the same thing.

Exactly. They went over this with my friend in traffic schools. Quotas are technically illegal, so you can't say that an officer must issue 200 tickets a month. However, performance standards act like quotas in a sense.

Originally posted by: Demon-Xanth
They don't have quotas per se...

...but in California if the local police don't make as much revenue as they did in a certain year the area has to cover the difference in taxes.
Also, if a cop isn't writing tickets, just what exactly were they doing? It comes down to a justify your job to your boss thing. If a salesman isn't bringing in sales, are they really trying? If a cop isn't writing tickets, are they really enforcing laws?

True but that's when you get cops who park at stop signs watching people do rolling stops. That's just pathetic. If you get pulled over for a rolling stop, either you totally ran it, or the cop is being a jerk. There's plenty of speeders to catch but they spend their time screwing around with the dumbest offenses. Same with jaywalking. Thank goodness I haven't seen anyone ticketed in Berkeley because any college campus has got to have thousands of those, and it would be even sadder than rolling stops to issue these tickets