Are Traffic Ticket Quotas Real For Police Officers?

There are a couple of police officers in Arlington who are being accused of inflating their  number of traffic stops due to what they claim is a department ticket quota.State law makes ticket quotas illegal in Texas, but attorney Randy Moore who represents the officers says the department is presenting these quotas informally. The Arlington Municipal Patrolman's Association, who represents the officers, wonders if this informal quota is actually happening. They say that the officers are evaluated based on their statistics and those statistics would include traffic stops and citation totals.

The Texas Penal Code states that departments, "may not establish or maintain, formally or informally, a plan to evaluate, promote, compensate, or discipline" based on the number of tickets officers issue.

One of the officers accused of inflating his citations has said:

Ticket quotas are alive and well in Arlington. Been told many times in a briefing before a shift they expect 2 to 3 traffic stops per shift, and 50% of your stops have to end in citation. Really bad.

You can check out more of what the officers had to say about the case in Arlington by checking out the story in the Arlington Star-Telegram here.

Our question for our listeners on the roads in Central Texas: do you think there is such a thing as ticket quotas? Let us know what you think!