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White Plains Officers Admit, Give Insights Into Ticket Quotas
By
Ben Yakas
Published Apr 16, 2011
Modified Apr 16, 2011
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By
Ben Yakas
Published Apr 16, 2011
Modified Apr 16, 2011
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Despite the lawsuits, recordings of station meetings, leaked documents, threatened boycotts, and jury rulings, the NYPD higher-ups have continually denied the existence of ticket quotas. But now, even Westchester officers have admitted to the quotas. One White Plains cop gave some insights to LoHud into the problems with a system that embraces quotas: "There's definitely a quota. Because of the pressure, people are writing 'bad' tickets—for things like parking more than 12 inches from the curb or with a tire touching the line. Those are BS tickets that we normally wouldn't write. It's really just harassing the public."
The White Plains Parking Department has been cracking down on parking enforcement officers it describes as "malingerers" who do not write enough tickets, pressuring officers to give tickets even when they deem them unnecessary. "Everyone whose average was less than 40 tickets a day in February and March was called on the carpet and then received a letter saying that their average was unacceptable," said the unidentified parking enforcement officer (PEO), who fears retaliation from the department. Another PEO added that they're writing tickets on delivery vehicles and utility trucks at work sites, all to avoid being reprimanded.
Yet another PEO said that the pressure was so great, it was on a real time basis: "if you don't write a ticket within a specified period of time—30 or 45 minutes—they let you know about it. It's a very harassing situation. They keep you in fear all the time about not writing enough tickets. You want to give people a break, but you're under so much pressure to write tickets that you can't."
Just as with the NYPD, the White Plains higher-ups also deny the quotas exist, arguing that no one has parking immunity: "There is absolutely not a quota and there never has been. We have a measure of performance which has been around as a management tool for the past 10 or 15 years. There's nothing new going on here, other than a few malingering PEOs saying that there's a quota," said Parking Commissioner Albert Moroni.
Tagged
cops
police
quotas
tickets
westchester
White Plains
Ben Yakas
Ben Yakas is a former Gothamist reporter.
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