I don’t intend this to be as mean as its sounds, truly, I
don’t. However, the facts are the facts. We hire people for the police force because
they aren’t very bright…I’m not being mean, but we all know its true….so giving
people like this, people with these sorts of limitations, a quota, is just
plain dangerous.
Arlington police chief concedes memos seemed to suggest
quota system
Arlington
County’s police chief has acknowledged a pattern of internal memos dating back
years that direct officers to make a minimum number of arrests and issue a
certain number of traffic citations each month.
Chief M. Douglas
Scott said that the memos did not amount to a quota system but that they could
be interpreted that way. He has called quotas “professionally unsound” and has
since directed his staff not to issue quotas or anything resembling them.
Scott was prompted
to look at past memos to patrol staff after he rescinded a similar memo last month that threatened
discipline for those who didn’t make enough arrests or write enough tickets.
When he read older memos, he said, he learned that the practice was years old.
Scott is
dealing with an issue that police chiefs across the nation grapple with as they
work to give officers guidance without pushing them into arrests and
ticket-writing.
“There’s a very
fine line between holding officers accountable and setting quotas,” said Chuck
Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum. “You want to
stop short of setting quotas. You never want to put that kind of pressure of
officers.”
Scott said he
first saw the March 1 memo, written by two patrol commanders, when news media
reported it. But his deputy chief of the Operations Division, Michael Dunne,
was included in late February e-mail discussions about the productivity memo
before it was issued, according to internal documents obtained by The
Washington Post.
Another
document shows that officers in an off-duty radar enforcement program were
required to write five speeding tickets per hour.
...and that's how we end up getting lying cops
Scott said that
once he saw the March 1 memo, he “was surprised it was as specific as it was.”
He said that
when he looked back, he found similar memos that squad captains had sent to
their officers going back several years and that he thinks the practice
predates his nine years as chief.
The earlier
memos did not mention disciplinary action.
One internal
document, dated Oct. 10, 2010, said a “recommended level” of monthly production
included one DUI arrest, seven arrests, five field observation reports, five
parking tickets and 11/2 traffic tickets for each day
worked — with no more than 25 percent of them warnings.
“If I had seen
this in October 2010, I would have said this is close to a quota system,” Scott
said in a recent interview.
He said he had
not seen the memos before because he generally does not review memos that squad
captains write to their officers. Had he seen them, he said, he would have
stopped them.
“I was told
we’ve always done it like this,” he said. “The commanders saw it as guidance.”
He has since
directed his staff not to write such specific memos and instead to offer a
general range for guidance. For example, he said that instead of directing
officers to write 15 traffic tickets a month, he would recommend writing
between 10 and 30.
“People
understand ranges better,” he said. “Police officers are used to having some
expectations of what their productivity should be.”
Their productivity should be to sit on their government workers asses until their called, that's all anybody wants from these morons.....productivity?
He added that
he has never disciplined an officer for not meeting an expected number of
arrests or tickets.
Scott said the
numbers detailed in the March memo are “not difficult” to hit.
“The high
majority of officers make those numbers easily,” he said.
