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HONOLULU POLICE ADMIT QUOTAS

FOUR SPEEDING TICKETS PER HOUR NOW REQUIRED BY HPD

The Funny Thing: It's The Cops Who Are Complaining



The deal in Hawaii is this: We don't pay much, but you don't have to do much. And take your time about it, we have lifetime employment here; in government, anyway. Teachers, judges, firemen and cops complain about low pay, and many leave for the hated Mainland. But those who stay don't expect to have to hustle to keep their jobs. The local teachers' union spends most of its' time fighting any sort of performance reviews, despite the fact that we are 48th in education, behind Alabama and Mississippi. But so are our teachers' salaries. Judges whine that they can't live on their measly $100,000+ annual salaries, although that is more than double the average household income here. And their job is basically part-time.

The cops are famous for standing around in big bunches doing nothing at every opportunity. Unlicensed bicycle? Twelve cops stand and talk about it for two hours. Then it's off to lunch. They start every shift by taking a meal break. Check any drive-in at 7-8am, 3-4pm or 11pm-12am. And don't look for them in the last hour of their shift, either. They're probably already back in the barn. But now some trouble-maker wants them to crank out thirty tickets every day, for the same low wages as always. Auwe!

This is funny because, for years, cops have been perjuring themselves in court by swearing that ticket quotas don't exist: Every ticket is given on its' own merits, for genuine "offenses." So, if they'll lie about why they gave the ticket in the first place, how can any of their testimony be taken seriously? Especally now that they have publically admitted that they have been lying in court for years? And THEY called the local TV news to report this.

They're being "forced" to ticket people for doing as little as five miles over the speed limit on the freeway, where the speed limit ranges from fifteen to fifty-five pretty much at random. This is after several Chiefs of Police have announced on our local television news over the years that they only start ticketing at ten miles over the limit. Fair and unbiased judges might have been inclined to throw out the manini little tickets before. Now they will all have to throw them out, at least for those "offenders" who can afford a legal representation.

The poor get public defenders for free, so they'll be OK. That just leaves the working poor and the already hard-squeezed middle classes, who don't qualify for legal aid, and can't afford real lawyers, to rack up these fines and these points against their driver's licenses. The real penalties will come when all of our already highest-in-the-nation (except for NJ) car insurance rates get jacked up because of these spurious tickets. And then there's the loss of jobs, or the failure to get one in the first place, since most employers require a "clean abstract," even for a desk job.

The brass at HPD probably don't care about this any more than they care about all the people they strand every time they close off the one road that goes in or out of the Windward or Leeward sides of the island. If they feel they have to spend eight or ten hours measuring the scene of an accident, or talking down an irate husband with a gun, or scaping body parts off the road, then a hundred thousand people can just sit there on the freeway and wait. They don't even bother to close the entrance ramps or post warnings: They just let traffic keep entering the closed roadway until it is jammed solid for twenty miles. The public be damned, it says on their cruisers. Well, it should. But it doesn't have to. We already know.


ABC NEWS: KITV-4 HONOLULU
"Officers Voice Concerns Over Ticket Quotas"

' Since the middle of October, traffic enforcement officers said supervisors have required them to ticket four motorists an hour for speeding during the three hours they usually spend on traffic enforcement. That's 12 speeding tickets required per motorcycle officer per shift and officers said they feel that's a quota. KITV has obtained an internal HPD memo that says: "For each hour of enforcement, the officer is expected to issue the number of speeding citations as set by the command." '

ABC NEWS: KITV-4 HONOLULU
"HPD Officers Say They Must Reach Quota"

' Many people said they think if they don't go more than 10 miles per hour over the speed limit police will not give them a ticket. But a KITV investigation has revealed new ticket quotas at the Honolulu Police Department have some officers writing speeding tickets to drivers going just a few miles per hour over the limit. Since October, police officers in the traffic enforcement division told KITV they have been required to give four speeding tickets an hour. To keep up with that quota, some officers said they're ticketing motorists for driving only a few miles over the speed limit. '

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