Police vs Policing: stastics are only part of the story

In a recent Richmond Times-Dispatch editorial entitled Law enforcement - Arresterfield, Joe Mahoney called out the Chesterfield Police Department on their apparent quota system for traffic stops, tickets, and arrests. It seems, Mahoney said, that police officers in Chesterfield County are required to make two to three traffic stops and at least one arrest every day. According to the opinion piece, that level of policing would result in “1,890 stops and 630 arrests per week.”

Whew! That seems like a lot of work. Or is it justification?

No question it’s difficult to judge whether officers are providing adequate policing value to the communities in which they serve. Productivity would seem an obvious way to go about it, I mean how else? It only becomes a problem when you take into account that productivity for police officers has a direct correlation to traffic stops, ticketing, and arrests.

Apparently that is not a problem in Chesterfield. The county police department has what can only be called a quota. People are always against discussing the idea of quotas. Many years ago when I was cutting my teeth as a reporter I was in a press conference with a local Civil Rights leader. The discussion centered on hiring practices and the disparity between male and female leaders. The figures just didn’t add up, we were told. In order to correct the problem, the suggestion was made to increase the percentage of women in leadership roles over a specific time period, say three-to-five years.

At that point, one of the more experienced reporters immediately asked whether that was not a quota. The immediate, and perhaps too immediate, response was “No, it’s not a quota.” Still, the reporter said that there was a goal and a time period, which is in essence the definition of a quota.

That pretty much ended that interview. Nothing was every clarified about quotas.

Today the idea of a quota still rankles some people. I can still remember my father talking about watching out at the end of the month because the police will be out hard looking for speeders in order to meet their quotas. And I also remember the denials.

Still, how then do you measure whether or not police officers are performing their duties as expected? How can we citizens be certain that the officers our taxes pay for are doing their jobs?

Management by performance seems like the best way to go. For me, I can judge the effectiveness of my team simply by reviewing their work performed over a given period of time. Did you get something accomplished or not? It’s really that simple. But it begs the question about how to determine that. Results oriented management seems to be the best answer.

But for the police department that seems to point directly toward stops, tickets, and arrests. And then on top of that you need to have some kind of scale. It’s not just apples to apples, you know. Even if there is no such written policy or quota per se, the police managers are still going to want to see proof of work accomplished. Certainly the miles put on a vehicle don’t really tell the tale. Nor do the number of times the police actually help people that goes unrecorded. It’s impossible to quantify such things, in the end there is no empirical data from which to judge effectiveness.

And so it seems that stops, tickets, and arrests are eminently quantifiable. There is a record for each and every one of those events that is tied directly to an officer, or a badge, which is the same thing anyway. But is that really the best way to judge effective policing? It’s hard to say, and like beauty is up to the eye of the beholder, so to speak.

There’s no question that traffic stops lead to tickets and in some cases arrests. In Chesterfield, according to the Times-Dispatch editorial, not meeting the prescribed numbers could and apparently has affected raises and promotions. A former Chesterfield police officer who was denied a raise for not making enough stops, handing out enough tickets, or making enough arrests opted to quit the police force when that was used as a reason not to give him a raise. Channel 6 News got hold of his story, which brought the county’s quota system to light.

According to the Times-Dispatch editorial, Chesterfield Police Deputy Chief Kelly defended the quotas, which he called “a performance-review system.” He went on to say that it would be wrong to consider Chesterfield police officers as “evil and out to get the citizens.”

But in truth, that isn’t the point at all.

Anyone who travels the local highways knows there are many opportunities for traffic stops, ticketing, and probably arrests. We applaud the officers who do those things as a matter of course, ultimately it is their job. At issue is whether such a policy ought to exist. Maybe a better way to do this would be to have a specific level of expectation. I know that doesn’t sound any different from the so called performance review system, but there is a difference however subtle.

It’s one thing for an officer to conduct stops, hand out tickets, and make arrests. It’s another to demand they do so at a given rate or quota. It’s a rare event when driving that I don’t see someone who needs to be stopped, ticketed, and in some instances arrested—and no, it’s not that geek in the rear view mirror. Do we really need a policy that sets a goal for such actions? Shouldn’t those things happen as a matter of course? From an officer’s perspective, I would think that’s all in a day’s work.