Iowa City Police Receive Traffic Stop "quotas"

There is a good little story below my rant on police quotas and dangerous drivers in Iowa City, as well as a link to the full story and comments~~So here goes:

It may have been put incorrectly, but there isn't anything wrong with quotas, except it may make people more likely to hit the numbers hard early in the month so they can coast later after they've met their quotas, and no matter the semantics that is what this written policy is all about!!


I have a quick way to get your quota in not just one day, but probably less than an hour. and you don't even have to move that much, other than to ticket the offending parties. And I am not saying this as a holier than thou driver, as less than two weeks ago I received a ticket for $69.40 as I forgot to renew my registration~~he could have just warned me, but no it was a sleepy Sunday morning and I was blazing past the intersection by the rec. center downtown and 18 miles an hour, performing all kinds of "crazy" driving moves, like stopping at red lights, staying behind the crosswalk lines~~sorry Barney gave me a ticket and said I was driving well..Lucky Me!!

So on to the first guaranteed quota buster area:

Please just park on the ramp just up the road from the mall, as you try and get on Interstate 80 eastbound. You will find any number of drivers nearly run over or into the ditch by truckers in the right lane, who are blazing past our fair city at speeds of 80 to 85 miles per hour. Often they are driving side by side, and if you don't slam on your brakes you would be done for. You could either ticket them just for speeding, or even more creative would be for not moving to the left lane to allow the cars to merge onto the interstate. Just so I could give you and estimate, I watched the interstate before writing this post for 15 minutes and saw 6 near misses up there. Very Nice Huh!!


I know there are many good truckers out there, just like there are many good regular drivers out there, but the crazy, or just plain reckless ones endanger everyone. SO that would be a first recommendation!!


Secondly, if you want to meet your quota for not just one police officer, but for the entire department~~please drive with me from Dover STreet to The Mall, between 9 and 10 am, down Muscatine~~and Burlington to Riverside Drive and First in Coralville,(or as far as you are allowed to go) and a return trip between 9 and 10 pm. You will find all manner of drivers. speeding, constantly changing lanes and just missing your front bumper~~without turn signals of course as that might give you time NOT to hit them, sitting at one green light for several seconds~until you honk your horn, and then blasting through the next light as it changes RED, not changes Yellow, but actually completely Red, and they still fly through, often narrowly misses the cross traffic as it begins to move, and this is each and everyday....You also get the bikers who race across the streets at night who are wearing dark clothes and who do not have lights on their bikes, often darting across just east of the L&M gas station in the darkest area by the apartment building there so you can barely see them as they cme within inches of your auto~this is true of pedestrians in the that same block~who are always running across the street and barely being missed by vehicles.


Now I used to speed, but also received enough tickets to break me of the habit, so it can be done. I drive the speed limit, and stay in my lane unless there is road work or something that moves us into another lane that is unavoidable, and the funniest thing is I have had drivers go all the way from near the Mall to almost my side of town, and they did every stupid, dangerous move that I mentioned above, and often they get less than 2 or 3 car lengths ahead of me by the time we get to 1st & Muscatine, so I wonder is it really worth endangering everyone on the road to get home a few minutes quicker..IF your lives are that exciting that it is worth dying or killing for, then so be it~~but the rest of us may disagree, and would appreciate you giving us some respect on the road as well!!


Take Care and Safe Driving/Biking/&Walking!!! And now to the beginning paragraphs of the story by Lee Hermiston of the Iowa City Press-Citizen:

An Iowa City police official has put into writing a policy that requires day shift officers to make more traffic stops each month.
But don't call it a quota.
"That's not what this is," said Lt. Dan Sellers, author of the policy.
Sellers, watch commander for the 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. shift, is requiring officers to make at least 20 traffic stops a month. However, Sellers said, officers must have probable cause to stop a vehicle and are not required to write a citation.
The policy went into effect at the beginning of February.
Please continue to the full story via the link and leave your comments!!Have A Great Evening!!

LINK TO FULL STORY AND COMMENTS