KEY POINTS:
Highway patrol officers should be "turned loose" or organised into blitzes to meet ticket targets, says a leaked email from one of Auckland's top traffic officers.
Police have consistently denied having quotas for traffic tickets, but critics say the email is further proof of their existence.
In the August 12 email, Waitemata road policing manager Superintendent John Kelly sets out ticket targets for his district's highway patrol officers in five "fatal" offence categories.
The categories are speeding, alcohol, restraints (e.g. seatbelts and child carseats), dangerous/careless driving and high-risk driving.
Each fulltime-equivalent officer is expected to issue 1420 tickets a year, including 560 for speeding, the email says.
With 225 traffic officers on New Zealand roads, that means 875 tickets should be dished out to motorists throughout the country every day.
And the email points out in bold type that the figures are "the minimum expectation".
Mr Kelly tells Senior Sergeant Bill Russell, head of Waitemata's highway patrol unit, in the email: "The responsibility for this performance would be over to you and the sergeants to manage - whether you turn people loose or organise blitzes on topics."
Mr Kelly told the Weekend Herald the figures in the email came from the national quarterly performance report, and were averages only.
"There's no quota," he said yesterday. "There's nothing that says, 'You will by God go out there and write out 25 tickets an hour for speeding' or anything like that.
"It's all around managing high-risk driving - as I said in the email, the fatal five - and reducing the road toll."
Mr Kelly said Police Commissioner Howard Broad made it clear individual performance targets for officers issuing traffic tickets could not be set.
"But we can set performance measures across groups. That's all it was intended to do - to say, 'Look, I want your team focused on these high-risk offences'."
However, National Party police spokesman Chester Borrows said Mr Kelly's email confirmed the existence of quotas "yet again".
"What running a quota does is concentrate on getting tickets and it doesn't concentrate on harm reduction," he said. "Police will give tickets to people where it's easy to catch them rather than where the real fear of death or injury is."
Police Association president Greg O'Connor also said the reality was that quotas existed.
"Every police officer knows that police have quotas and wryly smile whenever they see senior police stand up and say they don't.
"They are dressed up many other ways but the reality is that there is an expectation of members that are out there, that they will write so many tickets to certain categories."
Mr O'Connor said quotas were "essentially wrong" because they impacted on "that most important element of policing, which is discretion".
Act Party leader Rodney Hide accused the Government of turning police into "tax gatherers" by allowing ticket targets to be set.
"They're more worried about collecting revenue than targeting criminals and making streets safe."
But Mr O'Connor disagreed that issuing traffic tickets was revenue-gathering, saying they helped change bad motorist behaviour.
And Mr Kelly said arguments about revenue-gathering tended to focus illogically on speeding infringements.
"It's simply because a number of people like to speed and they don't like to be sanctioned for it. We've got to remember that the only people who get the tickets are the people who offend."
A spokesman for Police Minister Annette King said she had made it clear two years ago she didn't support quotas.
"She believes that police should be policing high-risk areas, dangerous roads where there's lots of accidents ... and obviously alcohol offences."
THE FATAL FIVE
Ticket targets set for each traffic officer per year:
* 560 speeding.
* 130 alcohol.
* 110 restraints.
* 220 dangerous/careless.
* 400 high-risk driving.
