Traffic ticket quotas will soon be officially illegal under a bill recently signed into law by Governor Rick Scott. A union representing the state’s police officers says the bill is long overdue.
Florida Police Benevolent Association Executive Director Matt Puckett says he’s thankful the Governor signed the measure banning law enforcement officers from writing a certain number of speeding tickets.
“The issue that happened in Waldo, and some of the issues that you hear about as a labor association that represents police officers is that ticket quotas is not maybe not officially condoned, but at times, they’re unofficially encouraged,” said Puckett. “And, we’ve seen cases where that’s been put in writing. We’ve certainly seen that when you look at when they do the evaluations, the number of traffic citations that are issued can sometimes be part of the measurement in some of those evaluations. So, we think getting that type of system out of our state is a good thing.”
Waldo, a small North Florida town, was known as one of the worst speed traps in the nation. It was forced to disband its police force, after it was found that a significant part of the area’s budget came from traffic citations. Under the new law taking effect July 1st, any local government that falls into that trap in the future would have to report to the Joint Legislative Auditing Committee.
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