Jones Wants Police to Protect and Not Focus on Quotas

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. – State Rep. Thaddeus Jones, D-Calumet City, is cosponsoring legislation that prohibits the City of Chicago from requiring a police officer to issue a specific number of citations within a certain period of time.

“Police should not be issuing citations just to fill a ridiculous quota at the end of the month,” Jones said. “This unfair practice, which has already been banned in all of the rest of Illinois, is pulling officers away from their jobs of protecting the public safety, just to generate funds for the city.”

Currently, municipalities across the state, except Chicago, are prohibited from requiring police officers to fill a ticket quota. The Jones backed Senate Bill 3509 removes Chicago’s exemption from state law on this issue. Police departments will use ticket quotas as a way to evaluate officers and determine promotions. However, several law enforcement advocacy groups say that this is an ineffective and sometimes misleading way to determine a police officer’s service. Senate Bill 3509 has passed both the House and the Senate with bipartisan support, and it now awaits to be signed into law by the governor.

“Requiring a certain amount of tickets be written is only burdensome to the officers and ineffective way at evaluating an officer’s performance,” Jones said. “We should be judging them by their ability to protect and serve their community, not by how many tickets an officer can write in a certain amount of time.”

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