Police quotas motivate unfair treatment

While driving home from work last night, I was followed for a few minutes by a police car. Although I was traveling just five miles over the speed limit, the moment I saw the police car I tensed up, cringed, waited and prayed he wouldn't pull me over.

I’m willing to bet that if I took a survey, most people would tell me they have similar anxieties when being tailed by the police. That people are unsettled by mere police presence is unsettling in-and-of-itself, especially considering that the main purpose of law enforcement is to “serve and protect.”

Typically, police won't issue warnings or tickets to drivers going a mere five miles over the speed limit, particularly on a busy highway where every almost other driver is doing the same. But that most people cringe when a cop pulls up behind them - even when no laws are being broken - is telling. Drivers not only cringe because they are aware that their fate is completely subject to the sporadic whims, mood and general disposition of that particular officer – but that sometimes police officers are compelled to be more heavy handed at certain parts of the month, issuing fines on the 30th, they would never consider on the 1st – to meet their quota.

Imagine that as a police officer, you simply want to uphold the law and prevent serious criminal offenses, but your own judgment must give way to your department’s policy of issuing a predetermined number of traffic tickets? Though you wouldn't normally pull someone over for certain minor infractions (like speeding a mere five miles over the limit), your own sense of proper justice is replaced by an arbitrary quota.

The justification is simple enough: quotas motivate officers to do their job, but it’s a false justification. Quotas are often rationalized as encouragement for law enforcement, but they also negatively influence the behavior and judgment of police officers, who for a brief period each month, are no longer “serving and protecting” but pilfering, as they become tax collectors for the city.

Many would accuse me of rationalizing my own desire to speed, but this is not the case. As a safe driver in general (I had never been issued a speeding ticket until last year) it still has become obvious that many aspects of modern law enforcement are more about harassment than protection.

Consider my first, recent traffic violation. While working as a chauffeur I was pulled over by a police officer for speeding near the airport. The speed limit was set at a ridiculous 25 miles per hour (I say ridiculous because the limit is still 25 even far removed from the airport where there are no pedestrians) and traffic consistently moves at a speed well above the limit. This is because most drivers assume, due to experience, that the speed limit is likely 35 or even 40 miles an hour. The police are aware of this common mistake – so they’ve set up a speed trap.

As a chauffeur, I have driven by the airport hundreds of times and have never seen an accident there. Is this because the police are constantly there to nail offenders? No, because almost no one drives according to the absurd speed limit along that stretch - that's why they're getting caught.

When I was pulled over, I explained to the officer that I hadn't noticed that the limit was so unusually low, that I was new on the job, and that I had never in my life been pulled over for speeding. I promised to be more careful and asked to be let off with a warning. The officer was unmoved, and instead gave me a $125 dollar ticket.

Why? Because I was a threat? A menace on the highways? I was following the normal flow of traffic on a road where there is no good reason for the limit to be 25 MPH, with nary a pedestrian in sight. Exactly why wouldn’t this particular officer, considering it was my first offense, let me off a warning? Here’s why - It was the end of the month and he had to meet his quota. To dismiss my assessment of what happened as unfairly skewed, or as an attempt to justify my own lawbreaking would be absurd when considering the repeat offenders who are often given warnings the first week of any given month – and yet a stiff fine is issued to a first time offender. I’m sure I’m not alone.

In a more human scale community, where the local officers were actually attached to the community and the people in them, it’s harder to imagine law enforcement harassing their neighbors to please the city treasurer.

Simply put, if there were no police quotas, I would have not been issued that ticket. Imagine a local sheriff, without pressure to issue fines and collect revenue, pulling over a guy from his neighborhood, or even some poor guy from the next town over who was clearly not a repeat offender. A warning to “slow down” would be more likely than a fine, and it would still be enough encouragement for drivers to be mindful of the speed limit. When cops are accountable to the people, particularly their reputations, you get better “service”. In modern, often disconnected, often overcrowded, “communities” (for lack of a better term) where cops are less accountable to the people because they neither know them nor fear them – you get quotas. Drivers become primary sources of tax revenue, not simply a traveling public to be protected.

I’ve even heard of police departments that hold contests where the officer who arrests the most drunk drivers wins a Playstation 3. If this isn't corruption - by encouraging officers to make arrests they might not otherwise - I don't know what is.

Contests, roadblocks, “check points,” and the like, in the end harass more innocent drivers than punish guilty ones, and yet quotas are still considered justified as an appropriate "law enforcement tool." However small, this is tyranny.

Just ask yourself this question; if the crimes of those who are typically punished due to quotas are indeed worthy of punishment, what is the purpose of quotas?