Police upset over parking placard ticket quota

From CBS 2:

Stunning charges Tuesday night claimed that the city is establishing a new parking ticket quota system going after drivers with government-issued permits.

As CBS2 Political Reporter Marcia Kramer reported, city cash registers are apparently going to take in an estimated $6 million more from tickets issued to city workers who abuse their parking privileges and park illegally.

De Blasio made it clear that when he said he would hire 100 new traffic agents and establish a new 16-member NYPD permit abuse squad, it would be paid for with ticket revenue.

And? If you're abusing your position, you probably should be fined double.

Are ticket quotas a thing of the past?

From the Daily News:

NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill vowed to discipline any supervisor who puts quantity before quality when it comes to summonses, it was revealed Friday.

“This department does not and will not use quotas for enforcement activity,” O’Neill said in a message distributed to every command citywide on April 28. “Supervisory personnel who use quotas or encourage or reward numbers for the sake of numbers may be subject to department discipline.”

O’Neill said he will also bring the hammer down on supervisors who “punish members who fail to meet a quota, or who threaten to retaliate against any member who reports the use of quotas.”

“Using quotas demonstrates a lack of understanding of today’s NYPD, and my expectations of you as leaders,” he added, encouraging cops to report any allegations of quota demands to the department’s Internal Affairs Bureau. “We are interested in quality, not quantity.”

The NYPD has always maintained that quotas are not used while enforcing the law — although police whistleblowers have testified otherwise for years, claiming cops were ordered to write a specific number of tickets a month — and were punished when they didn’t hand out enough.

Why ticket quotas aren't a good idea

From the NY Post:

The city will shell out $75 million to settle a class-action lawsuit involving nearly 1 million bogus NYPD summonses allegedly issued to meet quotas, officials said Monday.

The massive payout comes six years after a lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal court claimed that cops were forced to issue the tickets for quality-of-life offenses to meet targeted numbers, “regardless of whether any crime or violation” occurred.

The court case involved more than 900,000 summonses that were issued between 2007 and 2015 and eventually dismissed for lack of probable cause.

The people who were ticketed may now be eligible for compensation to the tune of $150 per summons. They will be notified about the claims process in order to get the cash, officials said.

Brooklyn school has quota for poor kids

From the Daily News:

In a first for the Bloomberg administration, a highly regarded Brooklyn elementary school has set admissions quotas for poor and immigrant students.

Starting next fall, Public School 133 in Park Slope will set aside 30% of its coveted kindergarten seats for kids who are living in poverty or are struggling to learn English.

The local school board voted to approve the admissions scheme this week after dozens of meetings with parents, education officials and school administrators.

“The goal is to the enhance diversity of the school by making sure preference is given to the neediest students,” said one of the creators of the plan, Community Education Council 15 President Jim Devor.

No other city school dedicates seats for poor kids, though about two dozen high schools with special language programs have admissions criteria that favor students who need to learn English.

Education officials said the admissions quotas are legal since they are not based on race, and other schools may employ them in the future, if parents ask for them.

Gianaris bill to stop ticket quotas

From the NY Post:

Police brass pushing arrest and ticket quotas could find themselves in jail for up to a year under a bill that state Sen. Michael Gianaris plans to introduce tomorrow.

Backed by the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, the bill would make it illegal for supervisors to require cops to make a certain number of arrests over a specified period.

Noting that good officers are being punished, Gianaris (D-Queens) said, “This bill would increase the penalties when quotas are used to evaluate performance.”

No such thing as quotas...

From the Daily News:

The NYPD says there's no such thing as a ticket quota, but memos posted at a Brooklyn stationhouse say otherwise.

Two notices obtained by the Daily News clearly spell out how many moving-violation summonses cops should be handing out.

The memos were posted in a roll call room for the stationhouse of the crime-ridden 77th Precinct, which covers Crown Heights and Prospect Heights.

The one for the week of April 5 to April 11 began, "Good day we need the following" - then gave the number of tickets to give drivers for cell phone, seat belt, double-parking, bus stop, tinted window and truck route violations.

The notice instructed officers to hand out the summonses at accident-prone locations and specified five intersections.

A memo for Oct. 18 to Oct. 24 also itemized the number of summonses in the six moving-violation categories.

For example, it said the precinct needed to tally 75 summonses for talking on a cell phone while driving, and 50 seat belt violations.

A source said similar memos for other time periods were also posted.

When The News inquired about the memos last week, NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said an officer had posted them without approval.

The NYPD has denied the practice for years.

Browne said the department "does not impose quotas but it has productivity goals related to actual conditions in a given command."

Ticket-fixing investigation comes to Queens

From the Daily News:

An internal probe of alleged ticket-fixing by Bronx cops has expanded to Queens and Manhattan, police sources said Thursday.

Records were pulled this week from the 106th and 107th Precincts in Ozone Park and Fresh Meadows, along with a highway unit in Queens. The Internal Affairs Bureau also seized records from the 26th Precinct stationhouse in Morningside Heights and the 32nd Precinct stationhouse in Harlem.

It wasn't immediately clear if IAB investigators are focusing on particular officers or if the inquiry is broader in scope.

Photo from jag9889 on Flickr

Bloomberg supports NYPD quotas

From the Village Voice:

In a July 2 letter obtained by the Voice, Mayor Bloomberg pleaded with Governor Paterson to veto a bill that broadened a ban on the use of quotas by Police Departments, and sought to prevent the NYPD from tying them to disciplinary action like transfers or shift changes.

The fascinating thing about this letter is that despite years of denials by the Police Department of the existence of quotas, Bloomberg all but admits that they indeed exist, and not just for tickets, but for arrests and, most controversially, for stop-and-frisks.

"The law defines a quota as a 'specific number of tickets...which are required to be issued within a specified period of time,'" Bloomberg writes. "The city finds the present law contrary to the effective management of public resources, and opposes in the strongest terms any expansion of this provision to include summonses or arrest activity for violation of any law or stops for suspected criminal activity."

The admission that there are quotas for stop-and-frisks is controversial because the practice is supposed to be done when an officer believes a crime has or is about to take place. In other words, they are supposed to be tied to conditions in the field, not some artificial number coming from police headquarters.

Bloomberg goes on to compare public sector quotas with private sector management goals. "For an employee whose function it is to issue parking tickets, a measurement clearly relevant to job performance is the number of summonses issued over the course of a reasonable period of time," he writes.

He closes by saying that the law could cause traffic and crime problems to increase. "By second-guessing the management of public safety agencies in their ability to measure arrest productivity and stop, question and frisk activity, the Legislature could cause fewer criminal arrests and summonses, more quality of life violations, more criminal activity, and actual injury to innocent victims," he writes.

Paterson, though, snubbed Bloomberg and allowed the bill to become law.

Cops really going overboard

From the Village Voice:

Earlier today, right around the time that the City Council was holding a hearing on the NYPD's controversial stop and frisk practices, cops slapped a Brooklyn man with a trespassing charge for standing under an awning to get out of the rain.

Vincent Mouzon, a 55-year-old telephone pollster who lives in Bedford-Stuyvesant, tells the Voice he was on his way back to a local laundromat after mailing three letters when he paused under an awning outside an abandoned building on Malcolm X Boulevard.

When the rain abated, Mouzon resumed walking. About a block later, police officers from the 81st Precinct stopped and questioned him. The 81st Precinct, by the way, is the same station house that was the subject of the Village Voice's widely read NYPD Tapes series.

"I showed them my identification and explained what I was doing," he says. "I even opened the laundry bag for them."

Mouzon says he told the officers that the ticket would be thrown out of court. "I told them, 'look I know about you guys, I read the Village Voice article, and I know your precinct, and I know you guys are trying to make your quota,'" he says.

"Here's a guy who was absolutely doing nothing, and now I have to go to criminal court and take a day off of work to deal with it," he says. "I was just standing there seeking refuge, and it boggles my mind that this could happen. This doesn't inspire trust in the Police Department. It's such a waste of time and taxpayer's money."

Brothers charged with trespassing for going home

From the Daily News:

A Brooklyn man standing in front of his apartment was hit with a trespassing ticket, even after cops watched him use his key to get inside.

Lindsey Riddick, still fuming over the bizarre Aug. 18 incident, said he showed police his identification. And when he opened the door to the Flatbush home, his girlfriend and two daughters greeted him and then ran outside the apartment.

"I told the officer, 'I live here and I have the key,'" recalled Riddick, 36, whose brother, Michael Riddick, also got a summons for trespassing. "You're giving me a summons? Come on, man. You got to be kidding me."

The brothers' claims have been added to a class action federal suit initially filed in May that accuses city cops of doling out illegal summonses to meet quotas.

The class action suit has 22 plaintiffs alleging bogus summonses across the city. In 19 of the cases, the summonses were dismissed. The cases against the Riddick brothers are pending. The disposition in one case wasn't clear late yesterday.

Majority of NYPD summonses are tossed by court

81st Precinct was over-aggressive

From the Village Voice:

In the summer of 2008, NYPD officers in Brooklyn's 81st Precinct embarked on an aggressive campaign to reduce crime by arresting citizens for doing no more than standing on certain street corners and building stoops.

This program emerges on the remarkable audio recordings the Voice began making public last week. Over a 17-month period ending in October 2009, police officer Adrian Schoolcraft secretly recorded conversations at Bedford-Stuyvesant's 81st Precinct, including 117 roll calls, during which superior officers like precinct commander Steven Mauriello can be heard instructing cops to arrest people for things like "blocking the sidewalk."

Supervisors told officers to make an arrest and "articulate" a charge later, or haul someone in with the intent of voiding the arrest at the end of a shift, or detain people for hours on minor charges like disorderly conduct—all for the purpose of getting citizens off the street. People were arrested for not showing identification, even if they were just a few feet from their homes. Mental health worker Rhonda Scott suffered two broken wrists during a 2008 arrest for not having her ID card while standing on her own stoop.

The precinct's campaign led to a 900 percent increase in stop-and-frisks in the neighborhood, which commanders demanded from officers in order to hit statistical quotas.

Another cop claims he was pressured to write tickets

From the Daily News:

A Bronx cop with an Ivy League degree is preparing to sue the city, claiming his failure to write tickets for 18 months led to a violent confrontation with his boss.

Officer Anthony Minoia says he was assigned to a one-block beat known in the 42nd Precinct as the "punishment post" after a bad evaluation.

The Columbia grad says the fact that he didn't write any tickets after that was not a protest against his boss, Deputy Inspector Timothy Bugge.

"I'm not going to pull out my summons book and write a summons because my boss is telling me he's going to make it difficult for me if I don't," said Minoia, 46, an Air Force vet. "I don't use my powers to make a deputy inspector get promoted."

Minoia is the latest cop to claim the pressure is on to write summonses, make arrests and do stop-and-frisks so commanders will look good at crime strategy meetings.

"I'm not going to give the bread deliveryman a ticket before going into the deli and telling him," he said. "I didn't forget what it was like to be a civilian before I got a badge."

Undercover tape reveals NYPD has quotas