The Gainesville Sun reports Officer Brandon Roberts told council members on Tuesday night they were required by Chief Mike Szabo to write 12 speeding tickets per 12-hour shift, or face punishment. He offered an electronic presentation and printed emails as evidence.
Waldo was ranked as the nation’s third worst speed trap by a national publication in 2012. The Sun reports that documents show about half the city’s $1 million budget comes from an item listed as “police revenue.”
This isn't a new phenomenon.Nationwide, cities put traffic ticket revenues in the BUDGET for the coming year. Here is an investigative report from Atlanta.It happens in Georgia, Alabama, New York, and Michigan. Palo Alto, California joins the party.
Illinois lawmakers are proposing a law that would prohibit ticket quotas. Police chiefs oppose it, because the loss of revenue would hurt their budgets. Of course, the public reason given is that they are afraid that officers will get lazy and stop writing tickets altogether. That is ridiculous. Aren't there other crimes that cops could be out there investigating? Or are the police chiefs trying to say that there is so little crime in Illinois that if there is no ticket quota, that police will have nothing to do? If so, maybe we have too many cops on the job.
Does the Fire Department have a fire quota? Does garbage collection have to pick up a set amount of garbage?
Police officers are under a lot of pressure to issue traffic citations, and some cases even have a quota to meet. With this, forfeitures, and other schemes, we prove that we have entered a police state, where business and government have become virtually indistinguishable. In other words, fascism.
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