Step One in the Banning of Evil Ticket Quotas

We offer a hearty Weber County Forum Tip o' the Hat to Utah House Representative Neil Hansen this morning, for the progress of his House Bill 255. This bill would, at long last, ban the evil practice of requiring Utah police officers to write a specific number of traffic tickets within a set period of time. It's high time we think, for the Utah legislature to jump on the bandwagon with this.

The Standard-Examiner reports that Rep. Hansen's bill cleared committee yesterday. The next step will be a vote on the house floor.

We urge our gentle readers to contact their House Representatives, and demand the banning of traffic citation quotas in this state. Not only do ticket quotas distract Emerald City's Finest from doing real police work, they provide an unfair and arbitrary foundation for municipal revenue. Ticket quotas also tend to promote the issuance of citations for frivlolous violations, deprive police officers of necessary discretion in close cases, and undermine citizen-police agency trust.

And make no mistake. A system of traffic citation quotas remains in force in Emerald City. Ask any street cop. A set number of traffic citations is part of every Emerald City police officer's monthly performance evaluation. This includes plainclothes detectives and officers on "special details."

Arguing in opposition to the bill yesterday before the House Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Committee were Boss Godfrey munchkins Mark "Justice Court Cash Cow" Johnson, and Assistant Chief Wayne Tarwater, the Std-Ex reports. Despite all evidence to the contrary, they testified (with completely straight faces, we suppose) that Emerald City standards for traffic citation issuance have nothing at all to do with raising municipal revenue, but are intended merely as a means of evaluationg officer performance.

Uh-huh, we say. Tell that whopper to the lady who emailed us last summer, complaining of being ticketed for a "rolling stop" violation, as she crept out of her quiet Emerald City neighborhood cul-de-sac at under 1 mile per hour.

The Salt Lake Tribune's Kristen Moulton reports an interesting nuance regarding yesterday's house committee hearing:

"Ogden Police Chief Jon Greiner, a new member of the Utah Senate, attended part of the committee hearing, but left early."

Sometimes it's possible to measure who is NOT in actual opposition to a bill by noting who didn't actually testify against it.

So let's all get on the stick and contact our state representatives. For those readers with extra time on their hands this morning, there's nothing stopping you from contacting every House representative on the above House roster. What the heck. We know our state legislators crave our citizen input, especially those House Reps in Utah's "outback."

The floor is open for anybody who'd like to throw in their own 2¢. Frivolous ticket horror stories, anyone? Is there anyone who reads this board who hasn't received a frivolous ticket? Anybody who feels they were victimized by Emerald City's ticket quota policy last summer, when some of Emerald City's Finest upped their attention to ticket writing, as a "demonstration" of a ticket quota policy in action?

Let us feel our readers' pain.

The floor is open.

Update 1/27/07 7:43 a.m. MT: We provide this link to a KUTV News clip of last night's TEEVEE broadcast on this topic. We think Rep. Hansen makes an exellent point: If they (opponents of the bill) don’t have quotas why is there a problem with the bill?