From Reason.com:
Tracy Oppenheimer | July 24, 2013
Auburn, Alabama is home to sprawling plains, Auburn University, and a troubling police force. After the arrival of a new police chief in 2010, the department entered an era of ticket quotas and worse.
“When I first heard about the quotas I was appalled,” says former Auburn police officer Justin Hanners, who claims he and other cops were given directives to hassle, ticket, or arrest specific numbers of residents per shift. “I got into law enforcement to serve and protect, not be a bully.”
Hanners blew the whistle on the department’s tactics and was eventually fired for refusing to comply and keep quiet. He says that each officer was required to make 100 contacts each month, which included tickets, arrests, field interviews, and warnings. This equates to 72,000 contacts a year in a 50,000 person town. His claims are backed up by audio recordings of his superiors he made. The Auburn police department declined requests to be interviewed for this story.
“There are not that many speeders, there are not that many people running red lights to get those numbers, so what [the police] do is they lower their standards,” says Hanners. That led to the department encouraging officers to arrest people that Hanners “didn’t feel like had broken the law.”
It’s no secret that I’m a cop, still employed at my advanced and decrepit age. In my moribund decline I’ve discovered that I lean more Libertarian in my views, along with an exuberant bushel and peck of Conservatism.
That said, I respect privacy and I respect common, decent behavior and expect that kind of behavior to be exhibited, by cops, to the public in general. As a supervisor, I expect my troops to mirror this behavior.
A quota for traffic and a quota for arrests grates against the already-chafed side of my Libertarian bent. Producing just to produce — and producing it poorly — provides the public just another way to denigrate the overall authority, cogency and trustworthiness of law enforcement.
In this same vein I also mightily dislike red light cameras or other means of automatic, mechanical ticketing, eliminating the human aspect. I believe these devices diminish the respect for law enforcement and remove human interaction from the loop.
Manufacturers of these systems also, had you not known, get a kickdown percentage of the cut from each ticket issued.
Now, some cities are actually removing their red light cameras. The City of San Diego pulled its red light cameras “as city officials cited public hostility and no measurable decline in accidents.
Mayor Bob Filner, at a Friday press conference, carried away a photo-enforcement sign from North Harbor Drive and West Grape Street, near San Diego International Airport, reports U-T San Diego.
Nearly 20,000 motorists a year received $490 tickets in a program that “can only be justified if there are demonstrable facts that prove that they raise the safety awareness and decrease accidents in our city,” Filner said. “The data, in fact, does not really prove it.”
Real cops know what’s right and wrong. Ginning up arrests and tickets for stats is meaningless and serves to minimize respect for law enforcement in general.
BZ
Concur with all, but we all know there ARE places that are infamous for tickets… Always have been, and always will be done… Ohio, Counties in GA, LA, MS places that ONLY target out of state plates, and ones that target military.
Quite true. Places where there are so-called easy pickins’. . .
BZ
Law enforcement was never meant to be an industry. Incentives to prosecute and successfully convict citizens for the purpose of levying fines are inherently evil. Quotas are wicked. This abhorrent thinking is a pure form of greed and indicates that there is a direct relationship between fine revenues and the enforcement budget. This should never be the case, directly or indirectly. The very moment that line is crossed fascism is born.
Law enforcement was never meant to make money. It costs money, plain and simple. You can defray some of the costs but basing a philosophy on MAKING money, with that as a precedence over public safety, is an incredibly losing proposition on every levels imaginable.
BZ
Funny you should post this at this particular time… I know of a local Department here in Texas that is going through something very similar…
I hope to have some *good news* on that front soon and I’ll call you and share details as I have them and it becomes *public domain* information…
I would be quite interested sir.
BZ
In my extended family, there are enough past and present LEOs to staff a small department. Bring up this subject at family gatherings and the ripples of discomfort are obvious.
My late brother in law went from a county deputy to a small town police chief. When he faced pressure to “increase revenue”, the local movers and shakers were the first to be pulled over and cited. That put and end to the bullshit.
Imagine that. BUT:
“All animals are equal. Some animals are more equal than others.”
BZ
Excellent post!
I wonder if any of your superiors ever told you “that you were just to smart for your own good”.
You have hit every nail with your hammer and never bent one!
I had that PRECISE phrase quoted back to me in the late 80s and also about 6 years ago.
BZ
If the “system” is TRULY all about SAFETY and NOT about cash, there is ONE immediate solution to red lights at intersections:
Extend the yellow.
Those who are familiar with this, you KNOW what I mean.
BZ
Because there are those jurisdictions that REDUCED the yellow in order to shove people into the RED.
And make more MONEY.
BZ
Hay, no kidding.
Damn, I lifted and rolled on a fresh yellow not very long ago in a 45 zone. I go through the intersection all the time, the Garmin pings at me because there is a red light camera there. This time the damn thing was pink as I was only 1/3 of the way through the intersection. Haven’t seen a ticket yet, but that explains it perfectly. Dirty buggers!
This reminds of Jim, a retired D.C. cop I used to work with. He had more kid in him than most kids do. One day in the break room I was discussing a paint ball outing I was on and complaining about one fella who used the blue pellets and they didn’t break as well as the others and that they stung something awful. Jim got that impish grin. Turns out MPDC would play paint ball with some of the prison trustees. He said he had the most fun the time they lost. I didn’t get that. Then he leaned in close and whispered, “We froze our pellets”.
Daaaaaamn!
The more you know….. Thanks BZ
Years ago the British were conducting bird strike tests on their own aircraft cockpit windows, to check for strength. The UK asked US aircraft manufacturers to send them some Canadian geese carcasses to replicate their testing.
Every UK cockpit window failed miserably. The Brits were dumbfounded. Why had the US canopies passed testing and similar UK canopies did not?
US scientists asked: “Did you thaw the birds?”
A long pause followed. . .
BZ
This is good news every now and then someone stands tall and does a good thing. However, an even more powerful witness would have been to stand outside the White House with a picket sign while the rest of the team was inside. The bad guys are “in your face” and the good guys have to do it that way too, at least sometimes.