Quota Cops

I do have a certain degree of sympathy for traffic officers.  Most of them hate the work, they became cops to fight real crime, not harass people for some technical violation of the traffic code:

People have suspected for many years that police officers do indeed have quotas for issuing traffic tickets. Cynics say that the practice is nothing more than a cash grab for local governments.

And now, the Montreal Police union is saying it's true: police in Montreal have a minimum amount of tickets to issue everyday.

In fact, the Montreal Police Brotherhood says officers were recently told by their superiors to start issuing 28 tickets a day -- up from their last daily quota of 18.

"There's only one priority for the city hall. That's giving tickets, bringing more revenue to the city hall instead of fighting criminality," Yves Francoeur, the police union president, told CTV Montreal.

The police department has raised its quota to make up for the more than $13.8 million in budget cuts from earlier this year, said the union.

To read the rest of the article: http://westernstandard.blogs.com/shotgun/2009/05/quota-cops.html