Sheriff's Lieutenant Disciplined for Telling County Board He Set Ticket Quotas

a reply to: AutumnWitch657
I have no problem with that..pulling over someone without cause though is like NYs stop and frisk to a degree. The reason quota's are not supposed to be is they are totaly open to be abused..slippery slope imho.
Cheers.

You know what really bothers me, the fact that a police officer admitted
that he broke state and federal law and also admitted that he well knew
he was doing so and yet he has not been arrested or brought up on charges
and continues to serve as an officer.

Quotas for police are the worst idea ever, we have the laws in place, punish
those who break them and leave it at that. What they really need to do is
ask their community for ideas on where to set up speed and ticket traps
for actual offenders. I could offer them some tips on where to sit and
get at least 5-10 stop sign violators per hour and that's just from my drive
home from work.

I WISH a police officer would sit near a certain spot where i drive home
everyday and have to deal with one lane that just about everyone runs
the stop sign to turn right but due to this those turning left across traffic
cannot see if the way is clear until they are all done flying through there
and nearly causing accidents very often.

The other day i was on my way home and pulling up to that intersection
and an suv was going in the other lane to turn right to my utter astonishment
they stopped at the proper designated spot and well actually stopped
so we could both then proceed safely with our turns. It was actually
something so odd that i was amazed lol.

a reply to: vonclod

I agree but I still thought they were a fact of life.
In sales you have to make a quota so that management knows you're out there doing what you're getting paid to do. I figured quotas for tickets was police management doing the same thing.

originally posted by: AutumnWitch657
a reply to: vonclod

I agree but I still thought they were a fact of life.
In sales you have to make a quota so that management knows you're out there doing what you're getting paid to do. I figured quotas for tickets was police management doing the same thing.

That may be what many people think, even a few cops, but it is against both state and federal law and this cop knew it. Like I said in an earlier post, if there are no crimes going on, then they try to invent some to fill the illegal quotas.

Perhaps you'd feel different if you, your family and friends were paying for trumped up charges even though none of you have been committing any crimes. It will always be your word against the cop's and you'd need a pricy lawyer to clear you even though you never deserved the ticket or what have you. Even if all you get is delayed on a car trip, the constitution is supposed to protect you from being harassed during your travels. How many people are being stopped an hour based on their quotas?

a reply to: MichiganSwampBuck

Oh I don't know. I was pulled over legitimately for speeding and when I went to court without a pricy lawyer I told the judge that i was just trying to pass a lady who was driving dangerously slow and only exceeded the speed limit for the amount of time it took to pass her and that the cop must have clocked me at the moment I took my foot off the gas to slow back down. No fine. Thank you ma'am.

a reply to: AutumnWitch657

Just because a judge let you get away with it once doesn't mean there aren't a whole bunch of cops pulling over people for no other reason than because they had to meet an illegal quota upon threat of their paycheck.

Did you have to take a day off work and drive to the court? That would be a needless loss if it were because of trumped up charges from a quota system.

Personally I'm glad the judge let it go and you weren't fined, but it has little (actually nothing) to do with illegal quotas. But if you're ok with cops breaking the established laws to take time and money from law abiding citizens, then that's all good I guess. Perhaps you can go find a cop and ask him to give you a ticket so he can fill his quota and keep his overtime pay.

ETA: I'm not trying to be mean to you about this, but you seem to be making excuses for the cops to go around knowingly breaking laws while they enforce them on innocent civilians. Regardless of how you feel about it, it is still illegal for them to do this.

a reply to: MichiganSwampBuck

Here's the problem with cop quotas. How do we do away with them? What if a cop goes on duty but doesn't actually do his job and instead just sits in the car and eats donuts? Without metrics to track officer actions there's nothing to prevent that. The moment officers are evaluated to see if they're doing enough, there's essentially a quota in place.

In a world where budgets are finite, the police department needs to make sure the officers they're hiring are putting in an appropriate amount of work.

I'm not quite sure what the answer to this is.

a reply to: Aazadan

They have an odometer, they can check mileage. They could track them on their rounds with GPS. They could report in on their two-way in regular intervals and make out detailed reports on their activities.

They undoubtedly have ways to check up on their officers, but ultimately it comes down to how much crime they intercept, real or not. Just having the police on duty and making their presence known in high crime areas should be enough, coffee and doughnuts or not.

When I worked at a park, despite the fact that it was spotlessly clean, the director would come in and place trash around to see if we were cleaning it up. The maintenance guys would do it too. Pathetic, to have the cleanest park in the area with constant customer feedback and the highest ratings, but they could never face the fact that we were doing our jobs and doing them well. Seems like a similar deal for cops with quotas. They have no crime, so they have to invent it to prove they are doing the job.

I'm surprised that this guy got in trouble, as it is widely-known that police here do the same thing, and have for as long as I can remember. About five days before the end of each month their presence increases dramatically, as they're all trying to make their quotas.

They also have 6 or 7 SUVs equipped with all sorts of cameras and radar to issue tickets. They routinely will park those at the bottom of a large hill, and despite having radar units facing both directions, they only have the radar turned on on the hill-facing side (I've confirmed this using several radar detectors), so they're not interested in actual speeders, they just see it as easy money.

a reply to: Aazadan
How about body cams..on from start of shift till the end, or no pay that day.

originally posted by: MichiganSwampBuck
a reply to: Aazadan

They have an odometer, they can check mileage. They could track them on their rounds with GPS. They could report in on their two-way in regular intervals and make out detailed reports on their activities.

So you track them with a GPS. What good does that do other than tell you they're driving around? The moment you start recording their stops or tracking reports you get into a question of how many is enough and you're right back at the quota issue.

originally posted by: vonclod
a reply to: Aazadan
How about body cams..on from start of shift till the end, or no pay that day.

Cameras are a good idea and they need to happen but this isn't an issue they solve. It would require a person reviewing a cops entire day, and keeping track of the number of things they do. The overhead for this would be immense.

It amazes me how anyone could try to rationalize that it is necessary to utilize an illegal (state and federal laws) quota system to monitor the police to insure they are doing their jobs.

Seriously, does anyone here believe it is OK for the cops to break the laws and yet enforce them on the general population? Where does that end? It's corruption, plain and simple. This is like justifying an all out police state IMO.

If it's OK for them to break the laws to make money, then it should be OK for us to do the same. Let's all live lawless lives and even the playing field here, that would be fair wouldn't it?

This isn't a post about anarchy and it's virtues. Why don't we just agree that some people believe that a quota system is necessary even though it is illegal and leave it at that.

I wasn't aware that it was actually illegal, though it does make sense. As I said before, cops here have done the same thing for ages, and everyone is well aware of it. Hell, I've been stopped (right before the end of the month, I might add) for running a stop sign that doesn't exist and speeding 32 in a 30mph zone before.

The most recent time I was stopped (also right before the end of the month), I was travelling down the street, and a cop turned from a side road behind me, flipping on his lights before he had even finished the turn. His claimed reason for the stop? One of the two lights illuminating my license plate was out. Nevermind the fact that there's nothing illegal about that (most vehicles only have one anyway) or the fact that the one that was out was pointed away from the road that he turned from, and he couldn't possibly have seen it until he was already behind me with his lights on...

Of course the cops here have always been crooked as hell....The city's name is Rio Rancho, but there's a reason many locals call it Rio Russia....

Here is a history lesson from soviet Russia's Gulag camps concerning police quotas.

But, to fulfill the camps' economic goals, more and more prisoners were required, which accounts for the rapid increase in camp populations in the 1930s. Eventually, every Soviet Secret Policeman was assigned a certain arrest quota in order to ensure a large enough labor force in the Gulags. In order to achieve this quota, the Secret Police simply fabricated cases against ordinary, innocent people (vividly described in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s short story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”).

Of Russian origin: The GULAG

Here is one example of why police quotas are a bad deal for the general population.

Police units in poor neighborhoods function as armed gangs. The pressure to meet departmental arrest quotas—the prerequisite for lavish federal aid in the “war on drugs”—results in police routinely seizing people at will and charging them with a laundry list of crimes, often without just cause. Because many of these crimes carry long mandatory sentences it is easy to intimidate defendants into “pleading out” on lesser offenses.

The Origins of Our Police State

Here is another example of how quotas lead to police corruption.

It’s not your imagination: the New York Police Department has been plan[t]ing evidence and framing innocent people all in order to meet arrest quotes. This comes as an a former New York City narcotics detective, Stephen Anderson, testified in court that the NYPD routinely plants drugs on innocent people. He described this as a “common practice,” a “quick and easy” way for officers to reach arrest quotas. The practice is known among NYPD cops as “flaking.” Anderson was busted, along with four other officers, “flaking” four men in Queens back in 2008. He has cooperated with prosecutors, and is admitting that far from a few “bad apples,” this is the modus operandi of the NYPD.

Ex NYPD Cop Admits ‘We Planted Evidence, Framed Innocent People’ All For Arrest Quotas

a reply to: MichiganSwampBuck

I didn't say it was ok, I said how do you stop it? Any metric that determines if an officer is working is inevitably a quota system by another name.

I know what you're saying Aszadan, it just seemed to me that you and Autumn Witch were trying to make excuses. Glad you don't think that this is OK and should have figured that when you said you didn't have an answer for the problem.

I too agree that the cost of keeping track of the police would be a problem and hugely expensive.

I'm sure many cops aren't OK with it either, but the guys on the top are imposing the quotas by threatening their paychecks and probably other ways too.

originally posted by: Aazadan
a reply to: MichiganSwampBuck

Here's the problem with cop quotas. How do we do away with them? What if a cop goes on duty but doesn't actually do his job and instead just sits in the car and eats donuts? Without metrics to track officer actions there's nothing to prevent that. The moment officers are evaluated to see if they're doing enough, there's essentially a quota in place.

In a world where budgets are finite, the police department needs to make sure the officers they're hiring are putting in an appropriate amount of work.

I'm not quite sure what the answer to this is.

Inward facing dash cams. My corp's transport force has them in all vehicles. They are mandated in many transportation occupations. No need to review the whole day. Spot checks will show mostly patrolling/ mostly not fairly quickly. At that point an inspector would review the recording in more detail. You know- for probable cause...

originally posted by: Montana
Inward facing dash cams. My corp's transport force has them in all vehicles. They are mandated in many transportation occupations. No need to review the whole day. Spot checks will show mostly patrolling/ mostly not fairly quickly. At that point an inspector would review the recording in more detail. You know- for probable cause...

On the spot checks, how often do you need to see proof the officer is doing something? As soon as you quantify that number you've created a quota.

Let me put this another way, lets say the spot checker believes an officer is slacking on the job and he gets fired. That officer then sues the department for wrongful termination. What percent of the time do you state in your policy to defend yourself, that the officer needs to be active? That creates a quota.

a reply to: Aazadan

Perhaps we should treat the cops as if they were "innocent until proven guilty"? Just leave them to do there job until they are suspected of slacking on the job. That way the extreme monitoring procedures are only used on a few slackers.

I know, dumb idea when they do just the opposite with us. Just a thought.