In many police departments, officers walk a fine line between enforcement and unfair expectations.

So when one sergeant gets scolded for not writing enough tickets, the pressure to create more revenue starts building fast from his boss.

Eventually, the sergeant finds a clever way to check the boxes without playing the chief’s game.

Read on for the full story!

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 and citations, and that is generally true.

This sergeant’s boss had a thing for writing tickets.

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.

So when he failed to meet those standards, his boss wasn’t happy.

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.

He couldn’t support what his boss was doing, so he found a way to fight back.

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.

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.

Soon enough, the boss caught on and questioned him about what he’d done.

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.”

This only made the boss madder, but soon the boss realized he had to back off.

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,” he said.

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

Thank goodness for a cop with a conscience!

This cop almost got a confession out of his own boss!

This commenter shares a thoughtful quote.

Speeding tickets seem to be a convenient way for some departments to meet their quota.

Apparently this is a problem in other countries too.

After the sergeant’s clever compliance, the chief finally backed off.

A little compliance goes a long way, especially if it’s malicious.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.