Posted on 07/24/2013 3:44:29 PM PDT by chevydude26
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.”
(Excerpt) Read more at reason.com ...
Love it.
/johnny
Awesome
Well there is or at least was, one honest cop in the Loveliest Village on the Plains.
That's an insult to the mafia.
Look, if you were an officer of the law, would you rather bust soccer moms in lovely attire for going 12 miles over the speed limit, or accost tattooed killers in MS-13 for things like human trafficking?
especially if they have a UGA or Florida bumper sticker ...
One disturbing thing is the comment in the recording along the lines of “busting people is what we signed up for when we got this job.” If you signed up to be a police officer just so you can bust people, then you are a bully, not a law enforcement officer.
You know, that presumption of innocence thinggy...
True story about Auburn P.D.; a guy ends the night at a bar about 1/4 mile from his house. Decides he has had too much to drink so he’ll walk home. Gets arrested for public intoxication while walking. They could have just watched him to make sure he made it okay or given him a ride. This was several years ago.
THAT sure makes the town safer.
Lots of bullies DID and DO sign up to bust people. Apparently only one cop resisted the order. Where are all the others?
I bet the new Police Chief wasn’t from Alabama
We are talking about a college town. You can get 100 contacts easy on an average Saturday night just by going after the underage drinkers. Seriously, if you have to meet quotas, you will be nitpicking honest citizens doing 26 in a 25 zone instead of serving and protecting.
I guess we could have are LEOs doing nothing.
The officer is correct, but he fails to understand that "serious crime" is the whole rationale for a having a police department, and a PD that eliminates 100% of serious crime is like a predator that eliminates its entire pool of its prey.
Police ignore serious crime whenever possible. It helps justify bigger police budgets and drives demand for more government.
In a just world, Justin Hanners would be the new police chief of the Auburn, Alabama police department.
Cops = revenue collectors
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