Joe Pyrah - DAILY HERALD | Posted: Thursday, February 14, 2008 11:00 pm
A Senate committee slammed the brakes on a bill that would have prohibited police departments from using ticket quotas.
In a testy hearing, Sen. John Greiner, R-Ogden and that city's police chief, faced off against Rep. Neil Hansen, D-Ogden, who has run the bill before. Several times Thursday, committee chairman Greg Bell had to remind the two that they should be addressing him and not each other.
Greiner said Hansen's bill amounted to micromanaging, and its influence has resulted in massive increases in accidents in the Ogden area as that police force has reduced the number of tickets written by 21 percent.
Accidents with injuries have gone up 21 percent and other accidents have gone up 72 percent, Greiner said.
"I'm glad you brought up micromanaging," Hansen fired back. "Let's give the law- enforcement officer the discretion to decide whether a ticket is written or not written."
At that point, Greiner said Hansen was targeting Ogden. Hansen disagreed. After Bell wedged his way into the discussion and asked them to follow procedure, Greiner ended his line of questions.
"Mr. Chairman, I'll get nowhere with this testimony," he said.
Hansen got somewhere with Sens. Scott McCoy and Ross Romero, both D-Salt Lake City. Both questioned testimony from police chiefs who said they couldn't send out officers to problem areas because any mention of writing tickets would constitute a quota.
"I think that that interpretation of the language is frankly quite tortured," McCoy said, who added that the bill wouldn't prevent a chief from sending an officer out to fix a problem, only to send that officer out to write a specific number of tickets.
The bill is also opposed by the Utah League of Cities and Towns. There is no evidence to indicate that police departments actually have quotas. "We need to do a study to see if that is actually the case," said Lincoln Shurtz of the league.
The bill had eked through the House 39-31 but met its fate Thursday when the committee failed to pass it in a 3-2 vote. Hansen said he might try and bring it back next year.
House Bill 264, Prohibition of Citation Quotas
Sponsor: Rep. Neil Hansen, D-Ogden
This bill would have prohibited state and local governmental entities and law enforcement agencies from imposing traffic citation quotas on law enforcement officers.