Is it legal for a police department to impose a quota on traffic tickets per shift?
There is no authority in this state for the conclusion that such quotas are illegal. This is not an issue that has been addressed by our appellate courts. It would seem that as long as each traffic citation issued is justified, the fact that some citations may have been motivated by a quota would not undermine the validity of the citations. There have been police departments in this and other states that have used and may still use such quotas. At least one state, Florida, has prohibited its state patrol from having a ticket quota, and the Wisconsin legislature has considered doing so also. In any event, quotas may be controversial, but this fact raises a political issue and apparently not a legal one. If your police department is unionized, quotas may be considered a working condition that would need to be bargained. This was alleged in a Public Employment Relations Commission (PERC) case, but the complaint in that case was dismissed as being untimely and the commission did not addres
