A cop that posts on a motorcycle forum I read swears up and down that they don't have quotas. They do however have performance targets. If they don't reach the target they get disciplinary actions against them. So they don't have quotas but if they don't hit their targets they get fired. Makes sense to me.
It's interesting reading everyones comments about cops. Certainly goes from one end of the spectrum to the other as far as feelings towards cops.
As far as quotas go, I can only speak for my department. We have a motors unit, made up of motorcycle cops thats sole purpose is to enforce traffic laws on the major highways. In a nutshell, their job for 8 hrs is to write tickets. They like to say "We have no quotas, we can right as many as we want". But how it works is if a Sergeant has a team of 10 motor cops and 9 are averaging 20 tickets a day and 1 is averaging 5 tickets a day, he is going to find out why that 1 cop isnt in the ball park of shift averages. I think that makes pretty good sense.
Now our patrol officers, they are so busy running from 911 call to another it is hard to find time to write tickets for violations but they manage to write a couple a day. If a Sergeant sees that one officer hasn't written 1 in 4 days but everyone else is averaging 8 in the same period, he will find out why. So there is no quotas, but knowing what the norm is, anything outside the norm will draw attention.
I've said this before but it is worth repeating. Civilians tend to view all cops the same. The fact is, departments vary widely on training, professionalism, screening, discipline etc etc. Comparing my department ( a little bias here) to a typical sheriff department or small town department in Texas is like comparing high school football players to the NFL. We have resources, pay, retirement, training that puts us at a level where you can and should expect high caliber professional treatment. Every stop is video taped, we have a police monitor and complaint system that is over staffed and anxious to work citizen complaints and we screen a LOT of people before we hire one. So just keep in mind in a lot of places you get what you pay for.
Also, for every youtube or new video you see a cop doing something wrong, there are 100's of thousands of instances where the cops did everything right.
But yeah, I've met jerk cops. Part of the motivation of becoming a cop was because I thought I could do better than the bunch I ran into in the town I grew up in.
