It's no secret that Weber County Forum is strongly strongly opposed to the use by Utah law enforcement agencies of ticket citation quotas. As our regular long-time readers are painfully aware, we've been railing on this subject for several years. That's one reason we were particularly delighted to learn yesterday morning that Rep. Neil Hansen's (D-Ogden) HB-264, which would prohibit law enforcement agencies from requiring officers to issue a specific number of tickets, warnings or complaints within a specific time, yesterday cleared the House Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Committee by a 6-1 vote, paving the way for the bill to be presented to the House for a vote.
The Standard-Examiner's Loretta Park provides a front page story this morning on yesterday's committee hearing, including a fairly thorough summary of the witness testimony. Missing from this morning's story, however, is any discussion of the comments of committee member Rep. Carl Wimmer (R-South Jordan), who gently chastised some witnesses who testified against Hansen's proposed bill. As it turns out, Rep. Wimmer is himself a retired police officer, with personal experience with ticket quotas. As Rep. Wimmer commented, he himself had been admonished and denied promotions during his career in law enforcement, for failing to write three tickets a day; and he expressed his disappointment with individuals who refused to even admit the plain fact that ticket quotas exist at all. It would have been better, Rep. Wimmer commented, if advocates of ticket quotas were at least to concede that existing ticket quota systems are a useful law enforcement management tool, and argue from that position, rather than to mendaciously deny that such systems exist at all.
All in all however, reporter Parks provides a good writeup; and we were pleased to find this morning that the Standard-Examiner didn't bury this story somewhere on one of its back pages.
As an added bonus for those readers closely following this bill, we provide a link to the State Legislature's website, where a Real Player audio recording of yesterday's hearing is available. Our readers can fast forward to the last 35 minutes or so of the recording, for a sampling of the arguments, pro and con, which will be be no doubt re-argued as this bill progresses through the Utah Legislature.
We'd like to extend our congratulations this morning to Representative Hansen, along with our best wishes for success with this bill during this new legislative session.
And what say our gentle readers about all this?
Update 1/24/08 3:48 p.m. MT: The Salt Lake Tribune's most excellent Std-Ex veteran reporter Cathy McKitrick also has a story on this subject, published shortly after we published our main article, wherein Ms. McKitrick drills right down to Rep. Wimmer's comment, mentioned above:
Police agencies have long denied persistent rumors and complaints of traffic-ticket quotas, but a former cop now serving in the Legislature says they are real.Hopefully Rep. Wimmer will make himself available for testimony in further legislative proceedings, especially any upcoming upcoming Senate committee hearings.
"I worked for a police department and had to write three tickets every day. That was a quota, and they exist," said Rep. Carl Wimmer, R-Herriman, a former West Valley City and South Jordan officer.
Wimmer's revelation came during a legislative committee session Wednesday where lawmakers discussed Ogden Rep. Neil Hansen's HB 264, that would ban such mandates.
