Police Outlawed From Setting Traffic Ticket Quotas

Are there really ticket quotas? I’m pretty sure everyone who drives has heard police are more likely to pull people over at the end of the month because they’re trying to meet a certain quota. So, is this for real?

I know a lot of good men and women in law enforcement. None of them have admitted that there’s an actual quota. For example, none verified that their superiors have said something like, “Go write 100 tickets or you’re fired!” So, where did this quota story come from? My guess is that our perception of a quota is much like any other performance-based profession. I’ll use scientists during the pandemic as an example. These brainiacs were researching and studying the COVID-19 virus and trying to develop a way to fight them, e.g. masks and a vaccine. If they weren’t giving us information on how you contract it, spread it, and finding a cure or vaccine, then surely they weren’t doing their job and were maybe sitting around playing online video games while wasting private and federal grant money. They need to do research and publish science literature so their bosses and funders know they’re in the lab actually doing work. You see where I’m getting at? How does the brass know their officers are actually working? They did some math and thought that a patrol officer should pull over and issue 2-3 tickets a day and there being 20 work days, an officer who “does their job” should write between 40-60 tickets a month and if they don’t have that number, they’re just dicking around on the road. In the end, an overproducing officer who pulls people over a lot would look like they’re doing a really good job.

Anyway, now you know officers don’t try to hit a target number. It just appears that way because if their job is traffic enforcement and we all know there are law breakers out there, then issuing tickets shows that they’re doing their job.

Regardless, none of that matters anymore because Governor Youngkin has signed into law which bans the practice of police ticket quotas in Virginia starting July 1, 2022.

Time to cut the officers a break, guys.