If the cops want to write more tickets in Minneapolis, I’d LOVE to see an increase in turn-signal tickets. Write ‘em up! Thousands at a time!

It could be like Ben Franklin’s list of 13. Every six months, tickets are focused on a particular type of traffic offense: turning through a red light, turn signals, reckless lane changing, noise… Then every six months the public (and law enforcement) would be drilled in proper traffic laws.

Seems to me that middle class, middle aged and older people in conservative cars and trucks speed with near impunity on the NJ Turnpike.

“Well I must say the quota got me two weeks ago on 65N in Southern Indiana.”

65 is a bad place to speed just about anywhere in Indiana as is 70, 69, and anything close to Indy or a larger city. They tend to target these areas more because of high numbers of accidents and construction especially near Indy but they usually won’t bother you so long as you are driving with the flow of traffic. A good rule of thumb in Indiana is never do more than 5 mph over the speed limit or go faster than the surrounding traffic and definitely do not speed in a construction area, they will nail you hard for that. US 31 between Kokomo and South Bend is another area to be carefully in.

But if you work midnights, ALL of your court time that is generated is overtime. So, work nights, get paid a night differential, write away, some will take it to court, and in FL, you get paid a minimum of 4 hours court time even if you wrap up in 10 minutes. My friend has this down to a science!! Really sad.

Are there any NY troopers who mostly write non-speed related tickets? I’ve heard some chatter that Buffalo to Syracuse enforcement on I-90 is really trying to shift the focus from speeding to other common offenses. But I really don’t believe it.

If you gave me the badge and pad for a day I wouldn’t write a single ticket for speeding and I’d still run out of paper.

I don’t know about that.

If you ticket crap drivers, you’d come across many with suspended licenses and/or arrest warrants. Then you have to spend 1/2 a shift processing an arrest (that’s a net revenue loss and probably does NOT count toward your ticket quota.)

Your best bet for promotion and better treatment is to restrict ticketing to those who speed safely while driving an average to expensive car. They’re best able to handle the taxfine.

Dukeboy01 knows of what he speaks.

the “tax collectors” were out in force for the 4th of July weekend.

I call that “The sharks are in the water” (state trooper) OR “Barney Fife is on the prowl” (county or local police)…

I disagree, he is not a Southerner if he can’t spell y’all. He must be a Yankee.

I’m not a fan of quotas but I’d sure like to see some of the reckless driving on the interstate toned down.

If you gave me the badge and pad for a day I wouldn’t write a single ticket for speeding and I’d still run out of paper.

I’d be ticketing for lane changes without signaling (especially the jerks doing 3 lane changes left and 2 right weaving through 10 cars in a pack of traffic with most passes within a couple of feet of someone elses bumper)

I’d also be ticketing idiots lane changing without signaling while talking on the cell phone plastered to the side of their head that obviously have only one hand on the wheel and zero eyes on the road.

TN might not consider those ticketable offenses. I’m not sure, but if needed I’d just write them up as reckless driving. The drivers I see on I-40/I-75 on a daily basis are absolutely looking for trouble.

If you flew by me at 80 mph with plenty clearance on all sides of your vehicle and signaled when you changed lanes (again with clearance on all 3 or 4 sides of your vehicle depending on the lane you are moving to/from) I’d wave as you went by or give you a big thumbs up.

Increase the speed limits but ticket the snot out of bad drivers. (not the joe that makes a one time mistake, but the guy you see driving like an idiot for 5 minutes straight in the midst of moderate to heavy traffic)

I kinda feel sorry for him, because I imagine that THP’s “performance evaluation” system is every bit as retarded as most public employee evaluation systems are and presents nothing but headaches for the front- line managers who have to figure them out. OTOH, just from reading his memo it’s pretty clear to me that he’s a passive aggressive hump of a supervisor who would probably throw any one of his guys under the bus the second it looked as if it was in his best interest, so I’ll go ahead and nuke him anyway.

The problem with evaluating a police officer is that it’s nearly impossible to do objectively if you don’t consider quotas. Let’s pretend a sergeant has to eval 3 officers. Should he measure how many arests and other forms of activity an officer made in the last month? Officer Fife made 16 arrests, but 13 of them were multiple arrests of Otis and two other local winos for Alcohol Intoxication, 1 was for domestic violence between Earnest T and Charlene, and he caught Gomer DUI twice. All of his arrests are for misdemeanors. He wrote 15 other traffic citations (11 of which were for speeding out on the highway where the speed limit drops from 55 mph to 35 mph when you enter town) and 50 parking tickets. He also took 2 accident reports and 3 other criminal complaints as a result of dispatched calls. Add it all up and he has a total of 86 ‘activity units’ for the month.

Officer Crockett made 6 Felony arrests, but they all came out of an investigation into meth being sold out of Floyd’s barber shop that took all month long and resulted in several leads that blossomed into successful investigations and prosecutions by the police in the neighboring town of Mt. Pilot. He also made 2 misdemeanor juvenile arrests of Opie and Johnny Paul Jason for smoking weed down by the creek. Ofc. Crockett didn’t take any accident reports, didn’t write any traffic tickets, and he only wrote up 2 criminal complaint reports (for his cases against Floyd and Opie), but he also wrote up and swore out 3 search warrants as part of that investigation. He also taught 3 DARE classes. Ofc. Crockett has a total of 16 ‘activity units.’

That leaves us with Ofc. Roscoe. He only made 1 arrest, but it was when he caught Goober sneaking into Aunt Bea’s bedroom window carrying a roll of duct tape, an ice pick, wearing nothing but a ski mask and a raging hard- on. The reason Roscoe caught Goober is because he liked to get out and rattle doors to make sure they were secure instead of sitting in his cruiser outside the bar looking to hassle Otis or hiding in a van with a pair of binoculars watching Floyd sneak methamphetamine precursors into the abandoned warehouse across the street from his barbershop. He also took 12 accident reports and 18 criminal complaints off of dispatched calls because he was usually the only one available for service most of the time. He only wrote 2 traffic tickets, both of which were the result of expired driver’s licenses held by people involved in the accident reports he took that Barney and Sonny didn’t.
He has 33 ‘activity units.’

So which officer is doing the best job? The answer is that all of them are doing their job well. None of them can be accused of gold- bricking, but the sergeant’s superiors tell him that he can’t give them all a superlative rating. He has to ding someone and rank them against each other.

The sergeant could be totally subjective. He could decide that the 16 misdemeanor arrests that Fife made aren’t worth as much as the 6 Felony arrests Sonny made which aren’t as valuable to society as the one arrest Roscoe made that saved Aunt Bea’s virtue. The problem is that then Fife and Sonny are going to get pissed and file a grievance on him with Sherrif Taylor.

Instead, he’s trying to find a way to rank his subordinates that appears to be an objective standard so he doesn’t take too much grief from them. That means considering all activity as equally valuable and just counting the numbers. In other words, Barney wins because he has higher numbers. The sergeant can put it on the others’ for not having high enough numbers. “Sorry, guys. You need to be more like Barney.” That’s what this sergeant with the THP is doing. Of course, it’s still a quota system even though the sergeant insists that it isn’t.

He is trying to cover his ass, but he is too stupid to realize that putting such idiocy in writing is likely to get him jammed up with his superiors over the media shitstorm that is coming their way. The official THP position is that they don’t do quotas for any reason and this clown has put in writing that he does. The fact that it’s not for revenue generation is immaterial.

Maybe not always in the first hour, but they could probably write three solid, no BS citations on an average day without too much effort, and I have no problem with that. If you read the memo pdf, you’ll see that this has everything to do with quotas, with not a word devoted to safety. Once you start mandating X number of citations, you’ve started a vicious circle (see how he compared his troopers to other units’ numbers) that has nothing to do with public safety. By directly tying evals to the quota, you’re forcing compliance.

Sarge gets bonus points for trying to shame his troops with the bit about “failing to carry out an order”. Total douche bag.

That’s uncalled for.

In further news, bears are Catholic, and the Pope craps in the woods…
Corrupt Southern cops, take #37455465

100% Plagarism.

My response has been to stop spending ANY money in Tennessee. I often drive through my state on my way to other more interesting places. I buy gas before I enter, and I make a point of not stopping and spending.

The people of Tennesee have choosen to represent themselves in this underhanded way by electing the folks that they do, they ultimately should pay the price.

I live in Taxachusetts. I for one am just glad that we no longer have to pay state troopers time-and-a-half to drink coffee in their squad cars and shoot the shit with road workers because only a highly-trained, armed lawman is qualified to stand on the side of the road and wave a flag when crews are out trimming trees. Of course, we are all waiting for the day a crew of helpless construction workers are taken out by a rifle-toting madman who would have been stopped if there had been a cop instead of a civilian waving that flag. Any minute now. Here it comes.

I just made a trip thru TN, KY, OH… the “tax collectors” were out in force for the 4th of July weekend.