Imagine being a police officer and you know your boss wants you to write a certain number of tickets each month. Would you do it, or would you only write tickets if you thought people actually deserved them?

In today’s story, one officer is faced with this decision, and he makes a choice that annoys his boss.

Let’s see how the story plays out.

Here’s one that has probably never been heard

Years ago I worked for a suburban police department, fairly small but average size for my state.

Many people suspect that these smaller towns generate revenue off tickets/citations and that is generally true.

My boss, the chief, was in his heyday a “go getter”..loved writing tickets and therefore expected us to follow suit.

I was a patrol supervisor-a sergeant-so I was expected to set the standard for the others to follow.

This particular officer didn’t write a lot of tickets.

One month I’d been called in and counseled about my low “stats”..in other words, I wasn’t writing enough tickets.

Legally, they cannot tell a police officer to write tickets and quotas are illegal but..your overall “contacts”, which includes citations, written warnings, and arrests, can be used as a metric to judge performance.

Mine were low..typically 20ish tickets and warnings in an agency where most were writing 70-150 tickets a month.

I didn’t sign up to be a revenue generator though and it didn’t sit well with me to have to make someone decide between paying a stupid ticket for a broken headlight or feeding their family.

He knew what his boss wanted him to do, so he did something else.

Anyway, I was told that I needed to improve my contacts.

Yes sir was my response, knowing that he meant write more tickets but couldn’t tell me to write more tickets.

So..my contacts improved. Every single person I stopped that month, which if memory serves was around 40, got a written warning.

No tickets. No revenue generated.

His boss talked to him about the warnings.

The following month after our stats had been compiled-and posted on the wall of shame for all to see-I was called back into his office.

You wrote 40 warnings last month and no tickets, he said.

Yes sir, that sounds about right, I replied.

And none of those deserved a ticket?

Well, I used officer discretion, and in my opinion, none of them did.

He called his boss out on what he was told to do.

He was angry by this point and told me he knew the game I was playing.

I’m not playing a game, I told him. You said my contacts needed to improve, so are they or are they not improved over the previous month?

Oh yeah, they improved alright you smartalec, he said..

That was the last time I was hounded about stupid stats or contacts.

I hope it’s true that all police officers aren’t legally allowed to be told to write a certain number of tickets. This officer did the right thing.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

This person likes how the story played out.

This person shares an even better story!

Here’s a story about a speed trap.

This person suggests a way to be a little bit more malicious.

I wonder if these suggestions would count as contacts.

He did the right thing!

If you liked that story, check out this post about a group of employees who got together and why working from home was a good financial decision.