A law firm hired by the City of Richardson has concluded the Richardson Police Department is not requiring officers to meet a quota for traffic tickets. A Richardson Police Officer made that accusation this spring during a public meeting of the Richardson City Council. Ticket quotas are illegal in Texas.
The officer told members of the City Council that she faced disciplinary action for not writing enough tickets or making enough arrests. The report submitted by the outside law firm found no evidence for that claim.
Supervisors with the Richardson Police Department do regularly measure an officer's productivity. However, the law firm found that supervisors use several different factors as part of that effort - not just traffic tickets. Supervisors were also allowed to account for the different amount of time required for different tasks, since an investigation of a complicated case can take more time than a standard traffic stop. The implication of a quota system, the report states, is apparently passed from one officer to another. It is not a policy of the department or part of the instructions given to officers by their supervisors.
"Patrol officers interviewed advised that they had been told, not by command staff, but by senior officers and even by training officers, that if they wrote thirty to forty citations per month they would not get spoken to about the number of citations they write," the report concludes. "Despite the above misgivings by some, the evidence indicates that productivity is measured by more than traffic citations."
The law firm also notes that investigators tried to interview the officer who made the initial public complaint but that she did not participate in the investigation.
Richardson Police Chief Gary Tittle is instructing the department's command staff to remind officers the department does not allow ticket quotas. The department will also standardize the forms that supervisors use for evaluating the performance of patrol officers.
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