'Quota' just a matter of definition, says police union

Greg O'Connor

Police have targets stating how many tickets they should issue on road policing but will not call it a "quota" because the public reacts badly to the word, the police union says.

The frank admission came from frustrated Police Association president Greg O'Connor yesterday just hours after Police Minister Annette King called a press conference to announce that police "have no speeding quota policy". She was accompanied by Commissioner Howard Broad, who claimed the same thing, but struggled to define the difference between performance guidelines, targets and quotas.

Police had individual performance management agreements and "the number of infringements they have issued will be assessed", Mr Broad said.

But it was "very difficult" to discuss the agreements because people immediately translated them as meaning there was a quota.

Police themselves misinterpreted the policy, believing there was a quota and some were "quite competitive" when it came to issuing tickets.

Mr Broad said he would send a directive to district commanders "making sure we are articulating the policy as clearly as we can".

The issue resurfaced after a job sheet from the Central North Island District urged staff to target areas with high traffic flows "as it is the last week before the end of the accounting year for us, it is a great opportunity to get our ticket count up to ensure we end up the top group in Central [police district]".

National said it was another example of secret police roading quotas, proving again that ticket collection was a revenue-gathering exercise.

Mr O'Connor said every police district set out how many tickets each officer should collect during each hour of road policing.

"They have to deliver so many hours ... and the way the effectiveness is tested is by how many infringement notices are written and delivered during that time.

"Basically everybody is well aware that police officers have to deliver these hours and there will be a performance target with them.

"It's done that way because it works to bring the road toll down.

"The biggest myth in this whole thing is about revenue-gathering and the thing that makes a myth of that is that the value of the tickets is irrelevant."

If it was about revenue, police would focus on tickets such as warrants of fitness, with expensive fines.

"The reason that nobody uses the word quota is because it's [seen to be] about revenue-gathering. The reason we are reluctant to use it is our troops get hammered by the public."

The debate had some positive benefits because it got people talking about speeding, but it clearly created difficulties for police.

"Because someone has decided we can't admit we have performance targets then they end up having to go into this tailspin every time it comes up."

Mr Broad argued that if there were quotas, there would be evidence of disciplinary action against those police who failed to enforce them. "Find me someone we've charged internally."

He was asked why it appeared there would be little action taken against the officer who issued the quota memo if it countered policy.

District Commander Superintendent Mark Lammas, who heads the Central District, said last night the officer who wrote the memo had been "spoken with by the road policing manager" and no further action would be taken.

There were performance guidelines stating how many tickets should be issued for each hour each officer spent on the road, he said.

In his district it was one ticket an hour for speeding, failure to wear a seatbelt and for other dangerous driving offences.

Without them a few police might just take the pay and fail to complete their road policing work, he said.

"But there's a difference between a performance guideline and a quota. It might be too subtle for a lot of people."

A quota would suggest officers could put their feet up after issuing a certain number of tickets or "alternatively if you haven't got that number you might be in trouble".

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