Ezekiel Edwards

You Can Quota Me On This

Last week, NPR aired a program about community courts on the Brian Lehrer Show (which I will discuss in a future entry). During the program, a former police officer of 18 years from the Brooklyn narcotics squad named "Steve" phoned in. During the ensuing discussion, Steve disclosed that police officers' success rates are determined predominantly by their monthly arrest total, and that this barometer of success is set by the highest ranking officials of the police department. If an officer makes only 10 arrests per month, the higher-ups will be very unhappy; come back with 100 arrests, the superiors will be giddy. Basically, Steve said, an officer wants to make enough arrests each month to keep his supervisors off his back.

Based on the disturbing number of innocent people I have represented, the staggering rate of constitutionally offensive stops and searches that occur, and the numerous clients who have recounted being in a police van with other arrestees and hearing the police say, "We just need one more", "A few more collars and we're done", and "Sorry, pal, we need to fill the van", it seems that Steve is onto something.

Supporting my clients' observations and Steve's experience is Police Officer Mubarak Abdul-Jabbar, the second vice president of the Patrolman's Benevolent Association (PBA). In the summer of 2005, he wrote:

"Rookie officers assigned to impact posts in the 75 [75th precinct in Brooklyn] report that they are required to conduct a minimum of 15-20 stops per month and were threatened with penalties, including unfavorable performance evaluations, reassignments and transfers, if they fail to comply... The PBA is concerned that... [stop and frisk] quotas are fostering an environment in which intimidated officers, especially less experienced ones, under intense pressure from equally threatened supervisors, may conduct stops based less on reasonable suspicion and more on a reasonable belief that failure to do so will result in some form of penalty (poor performance evaluations, placement in the Performance Monitoring Program, reassignment, transfer, etc.). As all working officers know, such penalties, particularly being placed in performance monitoring, have a significant impact on one's personal and professional life. Ironically, with respect to performance monitoring, officers may be damned if they meet the quota (more civilian complaints) and damned if they don't (poor evaluations, etc.)."

In other words, irrespective of whether a crime has been committed, police officers are essentially under orders to make a certain number of arrests every month. No wonder there are so many people arrested for petty offenses (so petty, in fact, that many do not involve an offense at all), that there are a high number of arrestees in the system every day (thereby elongating the arrest-to-arraignment time well past 24 hours), and that the police conduct so many illegal stops and searches (how else would they ever find enough contraband to meet their arrest quota?). As Officer Abdul-Jabbar pointed out, the State Attorney General's analysis of approximately 175,000 police stops in 1998 and the beginning of 1999 found that about 23% of the stops they reviewed failed to satisfy the necessary constitutional standard to justify a stop (the AG also concluded that the NYPD had discriminated against minorities, who make up the overwhelming number of people illegally stopped and searched).

Behind the blue wall of silence, there is a not-so-silent arrest quota that each police officer is expected to adhere to or else be in trouble. Not in as much trouble, however, as the 20-year-old African-American or Latino walking down the same street as a young police officer who has only made 14 arrests over the past four weeks. When faced with a choice of keeping his job or doing justice, most police officers (like most people) will opt for keeping his job.

It is time that the police department relieve police officers from that choice and communities from the consequences by abandoning any semblance of a quota system, instead focusing crime-fighting resources in the right place: where actual crime is taking place.

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Posted at 7:30 AM, Feb 23, 2006 in Criminal Justice
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