Most people have made innocent mistakes while driving.
We drive over the speed limit through a school zone, do a rolling stop, or forget to buckle up, just to be stopped in our tracks by the sound of a siren and the flashing blue and red lights in our rearview mirror.
If this has ever happened to you, then like many other people you’ve probably thought to yourself “The police are out to get me.” You may not be wrong.
A secret recording of New York City Police Department stops is evidence to the existence of quotas. The tape proves that precinct officials have more than “performance goals,” as they have termed them, when it comes to ticketing.
During the tape, Police Captain Alex Perez warns commanders to increase the number of summons being written or “face the consequences,” according to New York Times reporters Al Baker and Ray Rivera.
Perez’s spiel continues as he suggests that “officers on a particular shift should write—as a group—20 summonses a week: five each for double-parking, parking at a bus stop, driving without a seat belt and driving while using a cell phone.”
Perez tells the officers in attendance that it is their duty as supervisors to “demand” these numbers. And if the officers don’t deliver? “I really don’t have a problem firing people,” said Capt. Perez.
This tape however, is not the first to bring to light the serious misuse of power by police officials. The recording emerged during an internal investigation of the precinct, which was prompted by tapes that had been made by Officer Adrian Schoolcraft in 2008 and 2009. The inquiry calls into question how the precinct records crime statistics, and whether or not those statistics are being manipulated. Such manipulation, along with enforcing quotas, is a violation of state labor law.
Admittedly, we are part of a numbers-driven culture. Numbers on the scale determine how beautiful we are, the number of zeros on a pay check reinforce how powerful we are, and now, the numbers on police department’s CompStats tell us something else. For those who have vowed to protect and serve, these numbers may attest to how capable they are as crime fighters. However, these numbers tell us a different story.
I’ve always imagined being a police officer as something noble. It is no wonder that children aspire to be these men and women in uniform as much as they would aspire to be astronauts or perhaps even presidential candidates. But while we would like to think police officers would do their job simply for the sake of living out their duty, we’re not so naïve as to think this is their only reason for doing so.
But when mere statistics are the driving force behind the way in which one carries out one’s job, this brings up a question of ethics. Is it wrong to think that we should hold our policemen and women to a higher standard of moral code? I don’t think so.
If the issue were whether or not police supervisors should be pressuring their officers to perform better, there wouldn’t be an issue. Instead, the use of quotas seems to prioritize crimes not based on their seriousness, but on how easy they are to catch.
This makes minor offenses such as double parking, talking on a cell phone while driving, or not buckling up, which account for the main summonses enforced to make quota—a primary concern of police officers.
Though each of these crimes presents their own dangers, their perpetrators are not exactly major threats to society.
Numbers cannot accurately provide proof of effective crime fighting, nor can they portray how safe our streets are. Unfortunately that’s what people will be led to believe.
If I deserve to get a ticket, then give me a ticket, but if a superior is pressuring an officer to ticket me for the sake of pleasing a system, then change that system.
Reach Jessica at jessica.renee.stone@asu.edu
