Video Transcription:
Do police have ticket quotas? It’s a question I actually like. I like to try to address this question for whoever takes the time to listen to me. And the answer I will give you right up front is that no, they do not have quotas. However, I find most people get, they form their own opinions on whether that’s true or not.
And I think this is why they come to that conclusion. For example, if an officer is assigned to a particular location, let’s say a four-way stop, usually what happens is they’re assigned to that location because there’ve been public complaints about the driving in that particular location. So the public, at large, will see a police vehicle there and oftentimes they’ll be leaving and ticketing people as they don’t stop for the stop sign. So it’s targeted enforcement of that. From that sort of a perspective, the public comes to the conclusion, “Well, oh, he’s just fulfilling his quota,” or “she’s just simply fulfilling a quota,” and that’s not actually true.
They’re there to enforce the regulations there because the police or the community has decided that there’s a problem there. The other way that the public, I think, comes to the conclusion that there are quotas out there is simply because when an officer is on duty, they’re usually going to be on duty for 10, sometimes 12 hours at a time.
They are given a ticket book, or they’re given instructions that in this particular area of the city or town, or wherever they may be, you’re to enforce all of the rules. They’re also managed, there are supervisors for those police officers. And the first line of supervisor would be a sergeant.
So, at the end of the day, an officer would return, and the sergeant’s going to be saying, “Well, you know, how did your day go?” And one of those conversations, or one of those questions, is going to be, “Well, how many tickets did you write?” So, at the end of the day, an officer coming back may have written no tickets or one ticket.
And that person may have spent the rest of their day in court, and it kind of makes sense to the sergeant, who’s managing all of these constables, as to what’s going on with that particular individual. Now, it could be the same question asked to another constable, and the answer may be, “Well, yeah, I was out there and I issued 25 traffic tickets.”
Well, in example one and example two, that sergeant knows they were working, and they can justify their salaries, and they know that they were doing the job for the community, a job that they were paid to do. But the third example would be a constable who’s simply out there, and at the end of the day, wasn’t in court, didn’t really go to any calls, and didn’t issue any tickets.
So, that particular officer may appear to the public, even though we know he’s not doing the job and maybe being lazy. When the public sees an officer like that not doing much, and then they see an officer who’s issuing a lot of tickets, you come to the conclusion, “Well, that’s probably a quota.” So it’s common to hear, a very common question.
But there indeed is no quota out there. And it is a question that is a legitimate question. And I enjoy answering that for you.
