New York, NY – Police Deny That Secret Tape Describes Ticket Quotas

New York, NY – For nearly every New Yorker who has received a summons in the city – caught at a checkpoint monitoring seat-belt use, or approached by a small army of police officers descending on illegally parked cars – quotas are a maddening fact of life.

No matter how often the Police Department denies the existence of quotas, many New Yorkers will swear that officers are sometimes forced to write a certain number of tickets in a certain amount of time.

Now, in a secret recording made in a police station in Brooklyn, there is persuasive evidence of the existence of quotas.

The hourlong recording, which a lawyer provided this week to The New York Times, was made by a police supervisor during a meeting in April of supervisors from the 81st Precinct.

The recording makes clear that precinct leaders were focused on raising the number of summonses issued – even as the Police Department had already begun an inquiry into whether crime statistics in that precinct were being manipulated.

But the New York Police Department’s chief spokesman said Friday, that the secret recording of police commanders at a meeting in April does not capture a discussion of quotas but rather minimum productivity goals.

“It’s absurd to think that managers can’t establish goals that require minimum productivity,” said the spokesman, Paul J. Browne. “To suggest otherwise would mean no recourse but to let slackers do nothing.”

In his first response to questions about the recording, which a lawyer this week provided to The New York Times, Mr. Browne said the numbers of summonses discussed on the tape, “small though they are,” did not apply to individual officers.

On the tape, a police captain, Alex Perez, is heard saying at the 81st Precinct in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, that “day tours” of officers -all officers working a particular daytime shift – should write 20 summonses a week: 5 each for double-parking, parking at a bus stop, driving without a seat belt and driving while using a cellphone.

“You, as bosses, have to demand this and have to count it,” Captain Perez said. The captain also made clear to supervisors that he would review summonses and that nonproductive officers would face transfers to less family-friendly shifts or even dismissal.

On Aug. 30, Gov. David A. Paterson expanded the state’s antiquota statute by outlawing them for tickets, summonses, arrests and stop, question-and-frisk encounters. The law prohibits using quotas as a consideration for punishment.

Patrick J. Lynch, the president of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, who fought for the law, said of the recordings: “To my ears, it sounds like a quota.”

Mr. Lynch said the new law “defines the practice as requiring a specific number of police actions within a prescribed period.”

“What separates a managerial target from an illegal quota,” he said, “is the punitive action for failure to achieve the number.”

State Senator Eric L. Adams, a retired police captain who sponsored the bill, said police agencies could not circumvent the law by arguing that minimum numbers apply to entities as opposed to individual officers.

“If you want 100 summonses per month, at a precinct, that attached number is eventually dwindled down to an individual,” Mr. Adams said. He said quotas robbed officers of their “most powerful tool” – discretion.