Do police departments have speeding ticket quotas? If so, is a driver more likely to receive a ticket at certain times?
Most police departments would say, “Not us. No way do we have quotas.” Our favorite quote comes from the Brockton Police Department in Massachusetts: “No sir, we don’t have quotas anymore. We used to have quotas, but now we’re allowed to write as many tickets as we want.” What is a quota? What is a goal? What is an objective? Getting a straight answer is difficult, but that’s what keeps investigative news organizations busy. In June 2005, MSNBC reported that the New York City police department used a quota system. In that story, two police sergeants said they were assigned quotas, and their supervisor admitted writing a memo in which quotas were only part of an officer’s assessment, but blah, blah, blah. In the great city of Cincinnati, WLWT-TV looked into this question and found that an officer received a punitive transfer
