Ticket quotas alive and well

In the Nov. 23 article "Traffic ticket quota on radar again," Rep. Neil Hansen, D-Ogden, said police departments are turning into tax collectors and he wants to outlaw quotas.

Sen. Jon Greiner, R-Ogden, whose day job is chief of police, denies they have quotas. The chief isn't exactly lying. In all the years I worked as a policeman, I never had a quota of tickets. They called it revenue enhancement, meeting our budget, job-performance criteria or some other euphemism that meant the same thing.

As long as police work for municipalities that profit from the tickets they write, they'll be under intense pressure to issue a lot of them.

The only realistic way to end quotas is cut the money link between tickets and cities. Traffic and parking fines should go into a state fund to be used for non-municipal and non-law enforcement purposes. Say road improvement and mass transit, for example.

Clark Larsen

Salt Lake City