Ticket quotas are commonly defined as any establishment of a predetermined or specified number of traffic citations an officer must issue in a specified time. Some police departments may set "productivity goals" but deny specific quotas. In many places, such as North Carolina,

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

Texas Texas ( , ; or ) is the most populous U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. It borders Louisiana to the east, Arkansas to the northeast, Oklahoma to the north, New Mexico to the we ...

, and

Florida Florida ( ; ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders the Gulf of Mexico to the west, Alabama to the northwest, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia to the north, the Atlantic ...

, traffic ticket quotas are specifically prohibited by law or illegal.

United States

One common way of preventing traffic ticket quotas includes statutorily regulating the distribution of ticket fine revenue, to prevent it going straight back to the

law enforcement agency A law enforcement agency (LEA) is any government agency responsible for law enforcement within a specific jurisdiction through the employment and deployment of law enforcement officers and their resources. The most common type of law enforcement ...

which issued the tickets; thus eliminating any direct monetary incentive to issue tickets.

North Carolina

North Carolina law, prohibits ticket quotas only for the State Highway Patrol. In 2002, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a Division of Motor Vehicles quota system could be followed by officers "without breaking the law".

Florida

Florida law distributes traffic ticket fine monies by small percentages or amounts to several separate funds preventing it from going back to the agency which issued the ticket. Some of these different funds include the overall governmental entities' general revenue fund, Child Welfare Training Trust Fund, Juvenile Justice Training Trust Fund, Brain and Spinal Cord Injury Trust Fund, Indigent Criminal Defense Trust Fund, Emergency Medical Services Trust Fund, Law Enforcement Radio System Trust Fund, Vocational Rehabilitation of the Department of Education, Division of Blind Services, Epilepsy Services Trust Fund, and Nongame Wildlife Trust Fund.

Use by NYPD

Officially, the

New York City Police Department The City of New York Police Department, also referred to as New York City Police Department (NYPD), is the primary law enforcement agency within New York City. Established on May 23, 1845, the NYPD is the largest, and one of the oldest, munic ...

(NYPD) denies using quotas in policing. In 2015, NYPD Commissioner

William Bratton William Joseph Bratton CBE (born October 6, 1947) is an American businessman and former law enforcement officer who served two non-consecutive tenures as the New York City Police Commissioner (1994–1996 and 2014–2016) and currently one of ...

stated: "There are no quotas, if you will." However, some officers dispute this, and describe being put under pressure to meet a specific number of tickets/arrests per month. According to former officer Adhyl Polanco, NYPD officers are expected to bring in "20 and one" per month, referring to 20 tickets and 1 arrest. Al O'Leary, a spokesman for the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association in

Brooklyn, New York Brooklyn is a Boroughs of New York City, borough of New York City located at the westernmost end of Long Island in the New York (state), State of New York. Formerly an independent city, the borough is coextensive with Kings County, one of twelv ...

says: "Such quotas put the cops under pressure to write summonses when the violations don't exist ... It takes discretion away from the police officer".

Netherlands

The national quota system for issuing tickets was previously scrapped from police performance contracts, but individual forces may still impose their own quota system. In 2009 Guusje ter Horst told Members of the

States General of the Netherlands The States General of the Netherlands ( ) is the Parliamentary sovereignty, supreme Bicameralism, bicameral legislature of the Netherlands consisting of the Senate (Netherlands), Senate () and the House of Representatives (Netherlands), House of R ...

(parliament) that the justice ministry had agreed that the police should raise

€ The euro sign () is the currency sign used for the euro, the official currency of the eurozone. The design was presented to the public by the European Commission on 12 December 1996. It consists of a stylized letter E (or epsilon), crossed by t ...

831m through fines.

References