Free Republic

High court in Mississippi says state trooper who issued 25 bogus tickets should never have been reinstated with full back pay. A Mississippi Highway Patrol officer who issued bogus traffic citations to meet his ticket quota was fired on Friday by the state supreme court. All nine justices agreed that the department was right to terminate Sammy William Ray and that the state Court of Appeals was wrong to intervene to give him his job back, with full back pay. Ray was a six-year veteran trooper in 2009 when a routine audit revealed that he had been responsible for an...

Auburn, NY -- Three days before Christmas, Auburn Police Chief Gary Giannotta laid down the law for his command staff. At the closed meeting Dec. 22 in the department basement, Giannotta gave this ultimatum: Tell your patrol officers to write more vehicle and traffic tickets — at least one each per shift — or there will be repercussions for those who don’t.... Threatening to punish employees who fail to make a ticket quota violates state labor law. Tuesday, the Auburn police union took Giannotta to task for his proclamation, and two college criminal justice experts questioned the ethics of his...

Bangor Police Chief Ron Gastia ... “It nonetheless remains necessary to increase the parking revenue and address the limited enforcement of on-street parking.” In that memo, which was leaked to the Bangor Daily News earlier this week, he announced the enactment of a new quota system demanding that patrol officers write a minimum of 10 parking tickets per month. He has since reduced the quota to five tickets a month. Gastia had not intended that internal memo to get into the hands of the public or the media, and when I spoke with him Friday he was clearly not happy...

CHARLOTTE, N.C. - Charlotte-Mecklenburg police supervisors offered prizes to officers who wrote the most traffic tickets during an eight-day period over the July Fourth holiday. Five officers from the department's North Division earned $10 gift certificates to Dick's Sporting Goods, although officials Wednesday couldn't say how many tickets were issued between July 1-8. Police Chief Darrel Stephens and Maj. John Diggs, who oversees the division, said they were not aware of the contest until they were contacted Wednesday by The Charlotte Observer. "I don't think there is anything inherently evil or bad about rewarding officers for putting in extra effort...

Monday, May 20, 2002 By MIKE ROARKE SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER Ronal Serpas sensed something was wrong in Enumclaw. Why did state troopers hand out tickets in only 40 percent of the crashes they investigated there during March? Shouldn't they have ticketed more? "What's goin' on, you think?" the Washington State Patrol chief asked Capt. Leslie Young, the Bellevue-area commander who sat in front of him at a captains' meeting May 2. The patrol offices in Tacoma grew hushed, except for the fans stirring air around 50 of the agency's top brass, who all held big books of numbers summarizing tickets,...