Home >Police Enforcement > Tickets and Cash > Texas: Police Chief Faces Ticket Quota Charges

Related News Wisconsin Appeals Court Limits Scope of Move Over Law Florida: Highway Trooper Busted For Writing Fake Tickets UK to Impose Tax on Speeding and Parking Tickets Georgia Balances Budget With Speeding Ticket Tax California Cities Skirt Law With Administrative Speeding Tickets View Main Topics: Camera Enforcement    Speed Cameras    Red Light Cameras    Revenue from Cameras    Camera Accuracy    Engineering/Signals Police Enforcement    Random Checkpoints    Speed Limits/Traps    Tickets and Cash    Seizure/Confiscation    Parking Tickets    Taxes and Tolls    Drunk Driving Laws Miscellaneous Issues    Miscellaneous    Hypocrisy    Bad Policy and Injustice    Propaganda    New Technologies    Privacy Issues The Revolt    Protests    Camera Destruction Subscribe via RSS or E-Mail Back To Front Page

3/19/2007 Texas: Police Chief Faces Ticket Quota Charges An outside investigation will determine whether the Red Oak, Texas police chief imposed an illegal traffic ticket quota. The police chief in Red Oak, Texas faces charges that he imposed an illegal traffic ticket quota. The city council last week suspended Police Chief Donald "Red" Fullerton and Deputy Chief Stephen Anderson pending the conclusion of an outside investigation by a retired Fort Worth policeman. Evidence shows that the city's police force began issuing a traffic ticket every twenty minutes during a severe budget shortfall. In January 2007, the force issued just under 1800 tickets, up from 559 in January 2006. City Councilman Ben Goodwyn told the Dallas Morning News that the chief was putting pressure on officers to increase the number of citations issued or face punishment. "They were getting threatened with termination, demotion and not getting raises," Goodwyn said. "That destroys the morale of the police force." The police chief budgeted $3.4 million in citation revenue, which required each officer to issue 320 tickets a month. A bulletin board in the police station displayed how each officer measured up. Motorists complained of receiving tickets for minor infractions such as driving 5 MPH over the limit on Interstate 35E. Source: Police chief, deputy suspended until investigator gives report (Dallas Morning News, 3/18/2007) Permanent Link for this item Return to Front Page

Front Page | Get Updates | Site Map | News Achive | Search | theNewspaper.com: A journal of the politics of driving