fact or fiction: police officers monthly ticket quota?
I would interpret these “no but yes” or “expectations but not quotas” and the article on New York like this: It’s not that they’re expected to just find someone to stop for whatever, but that if you didn’t stop X number of people, you just weren’t watching. If I had the power to ticket people I could easily ticket 10-20 cars on my walk from home to the office. People parked illegally, people running yellow and red lights, people who don’t stop when I want to cross the street, people idling their cars, people littering, people not signalling, people not stopping at stop signs etc. etc. So if you gave me the ticket book and I gave out 3 tickets, then you would think something was up. There is no shortage of people breaking the law. If you claim you just couldn’t find some reasonable number of people to ticket, you’re just lying. Provided the “quota” is within this reasonable range (i.e. a little lower than the number of people you could on average ticket if you were paying a reasonable a
First, I do think what is mentioned above is probably accurate, that there is some pressure, official or not, on cops, particularly traffic cops and highway patrol, to write tickets. However, I would bet that the vast majority of stops made and tickets written are for actual traffic violations. That is, it’s not as if I think cops are stopping people who are NOT breaking the law just to meet quotas. Just that, if there is not a pressure to maintain quotas, they might let someone off and not stop them if they are a mere X over the speed limit instead of 2X. I used to travel a lot by car and there were 2 sections, one to the north of me and one to the south, that were notorious speed traps. I got stopped there a couple times each and each time I was pretty sure there was a quota, and there probably was. But I was breaking the limit each time, just in a fashion that in MOST jurisdictions won’t get you stopped (i.e. less than 10 over the limit). But still, I was breaking the law.
The problem is that people won’t respect the law, or officers of the law, if they are ticketed indiscriminately. 5 mph over, failure to signal, slowing but not stopping at a stop sign at a totally clear intersection, ANYTHING that was accidental and didn’t harm anyone, etc. Nearly everyone does these things at some point, and let’s face it, it doesn’t cause a problem. I tend to favour ticketing for these things even if it “doesn’t cause a problem” because it does cause a problem. If when you’re going to turn you check to see if there’s anyone around and there’s no one around so you don’t signal, that’s a problem. Why? Because you’ve turned signaling into a decision rather than an automatic reflex. Once you’ve done that you’re more likely to forget at a moment when it does matter, and you’re also introducing the possiblity that one day you’ll think it’s ok not to signal and it’s not. Also, this is probably a Massachusetts thing, but it seems like the drivers around here, on those rare o
