It’s a sentiment usually uttered by frustrated drivers who have been ticketed by a police officer for a traffic violation: “They just pulled me over because they need to meet their quotas.” But is there any truth to that accusation?
Law enforcement agencies will always answer with an emphatic “no,” saying that any traffic citations are only issued in response to the actions of drivers. But the real answer is a bit more complicated than that – at least in some cases.
Here’s why: in addition to their normal sources of funding, police departments, sheriff’s offices, or other municipal agencies often receive federal or state grants to finance certain law enforcement initiatives. One such initiative with which Washington residents might be familiar is the Target Zero campaign, which aims to arrest drivers who are under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Target Zero is funded in part by some of these grants.
Of course, grants aren’t limited to law enforcement. They are established to fund a wide variety of endeavors in fields ranging from medicine and environmental science to entrepreneurism and social causes. But there is one thing that all grants (worth their salt) have in common: a list of goals and objectives. After all, the entities that fund grants want to make sure that the money they are giving away is being spent wisely and relevantly; and establishing goals and objectives is a way to do just that.
Many times, a grant’s goals and objectives might be spelled out in terms of specific outcomes. For instance, an entrepreneurial grant might call for the money to be used to form a small business that provides at least 100 new jobs in a given county. A medical grant for an expansion of an oncology center might stipulate that the upgraded facility be able to boost its patient load by 25%.
Or… a grant to fund a drunk driving prevention task force might call for a police department to write between two and four citations per hour during a given crackdown period.
Does that sound like a quota to you?
It did to a judge in Howard County, Maryland. She tossed out a DUI conviction because of perceived quotas stemming from a federally-funded initiative implemented by the county’s police force to reduce drunk and aggressive driving during the first four months of 2011. According to the police chief, the grant “mandated that an average of 2-4 citations must be written per hour on each of these details by each officer or future funding may be withheld.” (That’s another commonality among grants: their funders tend to yank the money from recipients if the goals and objectives aren’t being met.)
The “smoking gun” in the Howard County case was the fact that the language in the grant was copied almost verbatim into internal police department memos which outlined the initiative for officers who would actually be making the stops and writing the citations. The police chief admitted that the wording in those memos could be misinterpreted to give the idea of establishing quotas, and the memos’ language was later revised. But he insisted that his department does not set quotas, noting that it is against Maryland law to do so.
There’s no evidence to indicate that the chief or anyone else in Howard County actively promotes citation quotas. But if a benchmark is established in a grant, and a law enforcement agency wants to keep the grant, wouldn’t it stand to reason that it might (consciously or unconsciously) tailor its procedures to meet that benchmark?
At the very least, it blurs the line between generalized goals and quantifiable quotas. Which is something to think about if you happen to be stopped by a police officer in the future.
Some might remember the issue of quotas hitting the news in 2010 in New York: