Verified answer

Quotas are illegal.

However, past data is often used to determine how many tickets a productive officer would write during a given time period. If the average number is 10 tickets, that might become the "standard" to which officers are held.

If certain officers consistently and repeatedly fail to meet that standard, it means that they just aren't doing their job. Notice that I said consistently and repeatedly. A failure for one time period (a week, a month, etc) is not consistent or repeated. There will be times when there just aren't a lot of tickets to write. Some days I come home and wonder how I only found 1 or 2 tickets. Other days I could probably start an assembly line to hand out tickets. There will be times when other police activities cut down on the time you have to find and write citations. It happens. But that's why this low level of productivity needs to be consistent and repeated before any action will be taken.

There can be disciplinary action for not maintaining "average" activity. That's the same as it is at most jobs. A lawyer who does one minor case a year isn't pulling their weight. If you make 2 burgers an hour at McDonalds, you're slacking. If you say that you can only find 1 traffic ticket a month, you're just not even looking. A large percentage of jobs have metrics by which the employees are measured. Ticket issuance is just one of the metrics that Police Departments use.

Usually the sequence of disciplinary action goes something like this: first time it happens you get a verbal warning. 2nd time... written warning. 3rd time... written warning and 1 or 2 unpaid days off. 4th time... up to 1 week unpaid leave. 5th time... possible termination.

There are no rewards for meeting or exceeding the average level of production.

So, to answer your question, no, there are no quotas. And any standards that are set are often so easy to hit that anyone worth a grain of salt would hit that standard just doing their normal job.

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Some do, some don't. It's entirely dependent upon how the department operates. My own department didn't have any quotas and yet elsewhere in the State of Florida, there used to be an "unwritten" quota system for the Florida Highway Patrol. Around 20 years ago, the quota system was actually outlawed by the legislature, and FHP was again given more leeway on using their own discretion in whether someone should be issued a ticket or not. Again, depending upon the state and the agency, there may be a quota system in place...or not.

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Years ago, there were many departments that used quotas to assist in determining which officers were out actually doing their job - it was part of your performance review. Some simply used quotas to generate income.

lawsuits from both officers and motorists who thought such a system unfair forced agencies to change the system. There were no longer hard numbers of tickets to write. Over the years different methods were tried to force the officer to write traffic tickets, but union protests and motorist suits pretty much backed them all off. It is a rare department that actually ties the number of tickets to an officer's performance.

However, even though the performance review might not ever mention the number of citations issued, the number of tickets is still something supervisors award. Now, instead tying the ticket to performance, perks like preferred shifts, preferred days off, special awards, and a much more favored review when a promotion becomes available, are the preferred norm.

NO, QUOTAS ARE ILLEGAL.

But; like it has been stated, if you are on patrol, and you work 40 hours a week, 2 days off a week, or work 22-23 days a month, tell me what do you think, as a supervisor, for evaluational purposes, would be the time required to fill a ticket book, with 25 tickets in it.

I was never required to write x number of tickets per day, but; a ticket book a month is not unreasonable. Some days I would write no tickets and others days 5-10, depending on how stupid the public was that day.

Usually a full moon, Mondays, Fridays and Saturday nights were always a good time to find people out acting stupid (Drag racing when your two cars behind them, switching lanes as they road raced down the roadways, playing NASCAR on country roads like Rum runners use to do)

If the police would stop writing inane tickets for minor violations they would have more time to devote to enforcing the law regarding the real crime that is continually happening right under their noses. But they never want to go after the real criminals , because they might get their head handed to them or worse they would find them selves out of a job. Most police spend their day looking for excuses to cover their butts rather than find a solution to the problems that are always out there. If more than half of the officers currently on the payroll were to be fired the public would find things pretty much the same and not because the ones remaining are doing a bang up job of taking up the slack of those fired. It would be proof that most of them are unneeded and never do their job anyway. If they need some help in finding where most of the criminal activity is happening just look at City Hall and the totally corrupt politicians that inhabit it.

Police departments do not have quotas. In fact they can make as many arrests as they want.

On the other hand an officer is expected to be productive. If a patrol officer works 20 days a month and only writes two tickets and never makes an arrest there is something wrong.

There are usually no official quotas on the book, but there may be personal expectations of departments as they use it for statistics, funding, and to make sure the officers are actually doing their jobs. Some departments encourage many arrests, others don't. the disciplinary action depends on the department.

Secretly, YES, many officers are forced to write tickets especially in this dead economy.

thanks everyone for the answers!