Police Dept Busted for Contest to See Who Could Extort the Most Drivers and Arrest the Most PeopleBy Claire Bernish Last month, as an internal memo obtained by Channel 9 revealed, the Winter Springs Police Department held this reward-based citation-production contest, likely to generate a bit of extra revenue by commandeering people as often as possible through legal state extortion. Winter Springs police insisted in a statement to Channel 9 the memorandum was meant to promote teamwork and camaraderie, and should not be equated with any sort of quota system. As Channel 9 reported, More than 100 citations, warnings and arrests were made during the weekend of Sept. 10. A handwritten memo titled Delta Shift Weekend Competition offered points for everything from a written warning to DUI arrests that weekend. The winner would get to float for a pay period and also a surprise. Jeff Lotter, a former Orange County Sheriffs deputy and a Florida Highway Patrol trooper who now works as a traffic attorney, admitted to the station officer discretion would likely be affected by the promise of a reward. I think a quota has a negative connotation: Meet this standard or youre punished, Lotter explained. This is the inverse of that. The winner gets a reward, but it has the same effect. Quotas are, in fact, illegal in the State of Florida but are often imposed in surreptitious methods to ensure productivity and, as mentioned, increased revenue for a department. Does it happen in some places? Yeah, Im sure it does, Chuck Wexler, Police Executive Research Forum executive director told NPR of quota systems last year. On the one hand, there is an understandable desire to have productivity from your officers. But telling them that you want to arrest x number of people, you have to cite x number of people, it just encourages bad performance on the part of officers. Or, more accurately, bad behavior. As Lotter noted of the Winter Park contest, some of the contest-induced September citations might have otherwise been mere warnings in other words, for the duration of the contest, the police officers probably victimized only marginally guilty individuals. There are multiple citations issued to one driver, he explained. Generally you think about a major violation being issued, and warnings after that, so it definitely raises some questions. Channel 9 reported a single driver was issued a $206 ticket for speeding, a separate $116 fine for failing to change his address on his license and a third fine of $166 for open container. Another received a $116 ticket for lacking proof of insurance and one for $131 for speeding after having exceeded the speed limit by just 9 miles per hour. Such ordinarily illegitimate or at least highly questionable fines dont lend to confidence in policing, especially given the current evaporation of trust between law enforcement and the American public. If citizens believe that tickets are being issued or arrests are being made for reasons other than the goal of law enforcement, which is about public safety, then their trust in the legitimacy of the system is really eroded, co-chairwoman of President Obamas Task Force on 21st Century Policing, Laurie Robinson, told NPR. In the statement justifying the contest to Channel 9, the Winter Park Police Department said: After receiving your inquiry, we discovered the document in question was drafted during the period of one weekend in September by a sergeant as a way to promote teamwork within her individual squad. The context of the document was meant as a way to encourage camaraderie among her officers. It does not amount to an enforcement quota. Even despite statutory prohibitions, the Winter Springs Police Department has not and will not sanction enforcement quotas of any kind. In addition to crime prevention programs, proactive traffic enforcement is just one goal of reducing crime within any jurisdiction and we are continually committed to that cause. We will investigate this matter further and take remedial action as deemed necessary through that investigation. So, essentially this Florida police department recognizes quotas as illegal, has found a way to thwart the law, and will investigate itself for any wrongdoing undoubtedly finding nothing untoward in the arbitrary increase in tickets and arrests, even of potentially innocent people. I think they know theyre in the gray area, Lotter said, and I would encourage them to dismiss these violations. Claire Bernish writes for TheFreeThoughtProject.com, where this article first appeared. Ticket quotes are required by all police depart. in this county. They outlawed that years ago. Tell that to the California Highway Patrol! This reminds me of the former charges that used to be made against those drivers who warned other drivers that a speed trap was ahead. If the warning driver flashed his lights the oncoming traffic would automatically slow down before it encountered the speed trap, therefore the police would not catch speeding drivers and would not issue citations. If caught doing this, these drivers would be charged with obstruction of justice. I havent heard of such charges now for a long time. I wonder if one of the accused finally made the argument in court that he was assisting justice not obstructing it. He might have asked the court whether preventing speeders from travelling over the speed limit was obstructing justice or whether it was aiding the police in doing their jobs. Of course that begs the question of whether the job of the police is to make money for the department through fines or whether it is to slow traffic down to the legal speed limit. Id sure like the hear the answer to that question. Lets call these criminals criminals. Extortion is a crime. That makes these criminals criminal. Extortion is defined as the act of obtaining a persons property or their signature, with their consent, under threat or color of official right. I think you meant for your lead to read Effectively annihilating law enforcement claims THAT writing tickets It was a bit confusing to read at first because of that missing word. Im a journalist, too. Not trying to nit-pick you, just lookin out. 