Posted on 04/30/2010 9:49:42 PM PDT by The Magical Mischief Tour
Senator Hopes To Stop Police Ticket Quotas
Some Believe Law Would Make Patrol Officers Less Accountable
NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Police won't admit it, but many drivers are convinced officers have a quota on the number of the speeding tickets they are supposed to write.
Now, there's legislation that would prohibit all police in Tennessee from establishing quotas. "I think there is, and it always has been a quota system. I don't care what they say," said one Nashville driver. State Sen. Tim Burchett, a Republican from Knoxville, believes ticket quotas are happening because of revenue, not for safety reasons.
He is sponsoring a bill that would prohibit law enforcement from establishing ticket quotas and keep supervisors from punishing officers who don't write a specific number of tickets.
"I think the law enforcement community would agree with me that they would rather be out busting criminals than getting some grandmother who is running late to church doing 56 mph in a 55," said Burchett.
The bill passed both a Senate committee and full House vote this week.
But some lawmakers who used to work in law enforcement said they are worried that passing this bill will make patrol officers less accountable.
However, some drivers believe banning quotas should have happened a long time ago. "I know we have to have the money for taxpayers, and stuff like that, to fund roads but some of the tickets are just ridiculous," said one Nashville driver.
Burchett has proposed this bill for three years, and this is the first year it has been passed by the House. He said he has worked with the law enforcement associations to come up with wording on this bill, but the Tennessee Association of Chiefs of Police said they have neutral view of the bill.
I grew up on Oahu. The quota system is always in effect there. You can’t spit without hitting a HPD officer with his radar gun out. It’s another democrat vicious cycle out there. The dems are always spending more
than comes in, thus they purposely bloat the police force budget up
with major emphasis on speeding and DUI traps. The ticket revenue keeps the bloated corrupt government dysfunctioning, and the police union donates only to the democrat party.
Traffic laws should be enforced for public safety, not as a fundraiser. It would be better if the state legislature took away the incentive for highway patrol departments to establish quotas in the first place, that is don’t let the money generated from tickets be used as a funding source for individual departments.
It’s far more profitable for cops to sit at hill crests or around corners with a speed gun than it is for them to actually patrol the traffic lanes. It also does little to address impaired, distracted or aggressive drivers, who are often missed by police manning speed traps because they need to be observed in motion, not by an at-rest observation point. More traffic patrolmen in motion with traffic nets fewer tickets and less in the public coffers, but it does make for safer roads.
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