Police union speaks out against ticket quotas

A Montreal police union has spoken out against an alleged quota scheme orchestrated by the city and the police department.

Officers have reportedly been offered performance bonuses based on several criteria, ranging from call response time to arrests and, controversially, the number of tickets written, according to a Montreal Gazette report.

“We find this totally indecent and unethical,” argues Montreal Police Brotherhood president Yves Francoeur. “We’re not a company that sells hotdogs, we’re working in public security.”

The report suggests the program was implemented in response to a drop in ticket infractions, and associated revenue, starting in summer 2014. The incentives are said to be worth up to eight percent of a senior officer’s base salary, in some cases representing $12,000 annually.

Ticket quotas are explicitly illegal in many US states including New York, California and Illinois. Some departments have been accused of circumventing the spirit of such regulations, however, by considering ticket numbers in officer ‘productivity’ or ‘performance’ assessments.

The city of Los Angeles in 2013 paid $6 million to settle lawsuits filed by LAPD officers who accused the department of implementing a secret quota system for traffic tickets. NYPD officers have also claimed the department enforces an unwritten rule, described as a “20 and one” requirement for 20 tickets and one arrest per month, however officials have denied the allegations.

Critics argue that quotas pressure officers to harass innocent citizens. Such programs also foment distrust among the population as the officers’ roles in the community shift from policing to fund raising.

“You have a policy that encourages police to create petty crimes and ignore serious crimes, and that’s clearly the opposite of what we want our police to be doing,” Radley Balko, author of Rise of the Warrior Cop, told Reason in a statement related to a 2013 whistleblower lawsuit.

The Missouri Senate earlier this month voted to ban ticket quotas in the state, while similar legislation is being considered in South Carolina and Washington.