Against Quotas In Police Work

During an hours-long conversation I had with a local policeman from the city (my the city), the subject of quotas came up. This was a patrolman who spent the night by himself every night, doing as he saw fit unless there as a call to which he had to respond. He was quite clear on this point: They do not have quotas. I mentioned that averages were enough to make a budget off of, and he agreed. He also said that, if someone were significantly underperforming, his Sergeant would likely tell them "Hey, work more!"

Quotas create sloppiness, unless they are so low as to be useless. If, on the other hand, your police agency is so big that the brass can't keep abreast of what the street cops are doing (remember: can't means won't) then a poor manager might set a quota of approximately normal levels of police work. A manager that should be fired might try to make himself look good, or his officers look/feel bad, or (worse) actually try to increase the amount of cases they work by setting a high quota.

Quotas make for shoddy policing. They are what a manager might do instead of managing his men more directly.

And they get innocent people killed dead. Yes, really. Johnny Law provides the perspective of an honest cop on one such incident. This sort of thing is one reason why up-and-up Police Departments don't use quotas. Not only because they sound crooked, but because they encourage crooked, and the citizenry they are supposed to serve ends up in deadly danger.