For years, some Ohioans have complained about areas where police patrol with the intent of giving out tickets for traffic violations like speeding, resulting in thousands of dollars’ worth of fines to bolster the bottom line of the local governments. And while many police agencies no longer engage in that practice, some do.
A bipartisan bill would make it illegal for police agencies in Ohio to have quotas for traffic stops is back before state lawmakers. It’s been considered in previous legislative sessions, but backers think it has traction this time around.
Sen. Tom Patton (R-Strongsville) is the son of a police officer. In 2010, his son Tommy died in the pursuit of a suspect while on duty as a police officer in Cleveland Heights. For Patton, officer safety is top of mind when it comes to mandating that officers hit quotas for traffic stops.
“These can be very dangerous. There’s an awful lot of bad stuff that happens,” Patton said.
Patton said every time an officer stops someone, they are risking a violent interaction with the driver. He said requiring officers to issue a set amount of tickets should be illegal, but it isn’t.
"It is completely legal for us to mandate a police officer to go out every single day on the taxpayer dime to produce ten or 20 tickets,” Patton said.
On the other side of the aisle and in the lower chamber, Rep. Bride Rose Sweeney (D-Westlake) said also she supports eliminating police quotas.
“When the public believes that police officers are writing tickets based on a need to meet a weekly quota over a desire to keep them safe, it undermines the public trust in law enforcement," Sweeney said.
Police officers support this bill
Many patrol officers want to kill quotas for tickets too. The Ohio State Highway Patrol has a collective bargaining contract that bans quotas. Rep. Kevin Miller (R-Newark) is a retired Ohio State Highway Patrol post commander. He said it should be up to officers to decide when and how to stop a motorist and how to handle the individual situation.
“It’s very simple," Miller said. "When we need to issue you a citation, we will issue you a citation. When we need to issue you a warning or think a warning will suffice, we will issue you a warning. That discretion should lie with our officers, not some arbitrary number that someone pulled out of the air and said ‘You have to issue X amount of citations.'"
George Sakellakis, director of the Ohio Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, said there’s another good reason to eliminate quotes for traffic tickets.
“It’s a complete waste of their time. The high level of training and the scant resources of the community through their police officers is totally squandered when that happens, when they are focused on strict, quantitative, numbers-based enforcement, morale plummets," Sakellakis said. "I don’t know of an agency that has ticket quotas, and believe me they are out there, where officers are happy."
Sakellakis said ticket quotas are based on one thing – revenues. He said they are not “in any logical way connected to safety.”
Sweeney said while similar legislation ran out of time last year, she's talked with fellow members in the House and “want to be a part of this every time.”
House Bill 131 and Senate Bill 114 have both been introduced and assigned to committees but have not yet had a hearing.
