Reidling 1 Andy Reidling Ron Christiansen English 2010 5 December 2013 Ticket quotas and city revenue.

As citizens we pay taxes to help fund things in our cities such as police departments, parks, garbage and a multitude of other services that are beneficial to us as residents of the city. These types of things are necessary for a healthy community and taxes are a good source of revenue for most cities but when it is not enough is it a good practice to use tickets as a form of revenue? I feel tickets are for a person who has broken the law and the funds for that ticket should go into a separate fund instead of the revenue fund, cities should not expect a constant flow of revenue from tickets because police should not be expected to issue a certain number of tickets each month. The purpose of police officers is to serve and protect but there are some people across the country who feel that they are harassed more than they are helped due largely to some police forces and their citation quotas. Citation quotas are illegal in most cities though they are still happening in countless precincts they are just called by different names, a little word play by the cities to circumvent their own rules by calling it a performance goal. When officers meet their goals they can receive prizes like a car wash for writing the most tickets and various other prizes can be earned by writing other types of tickets; impounding an unlicensed vehicle, most DUI arrests if you can write a ticket there is a category and a prize. Some new evidence of these types of programs at local offices was found through inner city email sent to

Reidling 2 Cottonwood Heights Police; a newly formed local police force that formed in 2008, three years after the formation of the city of Cottonwood Heights. This evidence of quota prizes was reported on by a long time well respected local reporter Debbie Dujanovic who works for a local news station KSL. The report shows how incentives were

used to promote officers to write tickets. For example impounding a car without insurance was good for free car wash coupons. Utah Criminal defense attorney Neall Hamilton states this is their job; they should be doing their job, but when you incentivize them you are going to get more questionable stops. These stops may be infringing on a persons fundamental rights as a citizen and I dont think that we as citizens should stand by and let the police ticket at will. A spokesman for Cottonwood Heights said the city doesnt feel the officers are doing anything wrong and are not going to stop them from randomly stopping people. These types of stops make revenue for the city and keep the officers out of trouble for not meeting the quota or performance goal. When officers are making these stops I feel that a persons rights may be violated as they are generally being stopped without probable cause, it seems people in Cottonwood Heights are guilty and need to prove their innocence.
This extra pressure on the officers to issue a certain amount of tickets trying to reach a goal is causing officers to spend more time looking for petty violations instead of doing real police work such as investigations. Another effect of this type of system is officers see it as a competition to write the most citations so they look for certain crimes and let others go Not all officers are willing to go along with their management and follow the quota or performance system but not doing what you are told to do by your superiors has consequences like retaliation. Justin Hanners formerly of the Auburn police department knows of these retaliations

Reidling 3 personally because he spoke out about the quotas and how he felt they were wrong. After speaking out there was a story done by Scot Drenkard about Justin and the retaliation that followed.

Scott works for the tax foundation and his writings have been published by many media outlets including CNN, Bloomberg, ABC, and The peer review journal of state taxation just to name a few, he is very versed in taxation and revenue for cities and the types of laws that follow. This was a case of an officer speaking out about a practice that is illegal, quota systems, and getting retaliated against by fellow officers and management by being given the jobs that senior officers didnt do because they were left for rookies. Jobs like walking his beat for the whole shift in a busy part of town, and doing prison transfer which was considered one of the worst jobs by all in the precinct. Ultimately Justin got fired for speaking out against his fellow officers right or wrong he broke the officers code and spoke out. One possible way to combat the accusations of unnecessary stops is to do as suggested by Neill Franklin a former narcotics cop and Commander of training during his 34 year career in law enforcement, Neill suggests body cameras. Neill feels that cameras would help to restore some of the trust that the public once had in its officers, the small cameras would be able to record an officers full interaction with the community during their shift. This would eliminate questions as to why the person was stopped and how it was handled during and after the stops cameras dont lie. The cameras wont help with revenue but they will help to not let anyone have their rights violated without it being recorded and allow the citizens to feel more trusting of their officers. This may cut down on ticket revenue but tickets are not meant for revenue anyway thats the job of taxes and fees tickets are meant to keep order.

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Quotas are a popular thing that police are doing across the country, but some feel it is not right and are doing something about it, like in New Jersey where an assemblyman by the name of Declan OScanlon is drafting legislation to forbid the use of ticketing numbers in performance evaluations stating the mere knowledge that these pseudo-quotas exist puts pressure on our cops that forces them to focus more on revenue generation than safety and security. As stated before many departments use the quota system for performance markers but as OScanlon points out in his release this isnt about performance its about money the sworn oath of police officers is to protect and serve the public to the best of their abilities not to help balance local budgets by performing illegal stops and searches. Some smaller cities dont have many sources of revenue such as Gilmore, Arkansas population 331. But this small city writes about 450 tickets a month mostly for speeding so they can keep money in their small town. Many of the victims have gone to court to find that the court is also in on the scam dropping the fines from 100 dollars to 50 but you have to pay court fees which oddly enough cost 50 dollars. The story for this small town shows how quotas can cause not only corruption and poor judgment by the officers, but also some ill feelings toward the police by the citizens. Now that people are catching on to the speed traps the revenue is going down less people are traveling through their town and the ones that do go slower again showing that tickets are not a stable source for revenue. The traffic slowing down does not help the revenue stream; tickets are something that cannot be sustained for an extended amount of time. Now the residents of the city are worried

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that the police may move to more aggressive means of generating revenue like in New York where they have the stop and frisk also on a quota system. In other cities the same quota practices that are illegal in small cities are also not lawful in larger ones. But in Atlanta the police chief has sent out email to all police officers explaining that future raises will be funded through ticket revenue. This may be the first time a city has spelled out the connection between traffic tickets and revenue. The mayor designated traffic/court revenue for future pay increases stating we need only enforce traffic violations as we are now, but increase our attendance in court to prevent cases being dismissed. In conclusion I feel that a quota system for generating revenue is a very real problem and should be addressed so that citizens can feel free to commute around the cities without fear of being ticketed. The revenue that is generated is not a permanent source of funding like taxes or fees, cities need a steady flow of revenue that they can depend on to maintain the cities and activities that happen on a daily basis as well as the police force. The police are here to serve and protect not to generate income for the city. If the police were not being forced to produce so many tickets I believe that citizens would feel much more at ease about the police and their functions within the city.

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Works cited Dujanovic, Debbie. KSL.com. KSL, 24 Oct 2013. Web. 30 October 2013. "Police ticket quotas as a revenue source." taxfoundation.org. N.p., 05 Aug 2013. Web. 6 Nov Franklin, Neill. "nyt room for debate." nytimes.com. New York Times, 22 Oct 2013. O'Scanlon, Declan. Njassemblyrepublican.com. press release, 24 October 2013. Web. 12 Nov 2013 Campbell, Phil. "speed trap blues." memphisflyer.com. Memphis flyer. Web. 12 Nov 2013 Staff, AOL. Aolautos.com. AOL, 26 Sep 2013. Web. 29 October 2013.

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