NJ Police Ticket, Arrest Quotas Targeted In New Legislation

NEW JERSEY — A bill is making its way through New Jersey’s Assembly intended to prevent police departments in the Garden State from reviewing officer performances with ticket and arrest quotas as factors.

The Senate voted on Jan. 11 to pass a companion bill 26 to 1, with 13 senators not casting a vote.

While state law prohibits ticket and arrest quotas themselves to be set within law enforcement agencies, New Jersey’s State Policemen’s Benevolent Association has indicated that an officer’s quantity of arrests and tickets have been factored into past decisions when awarding, promoting, disciplining and demoting law enforcement officers within many police departments.

Bill A4058, which left the hands of members of the Assembly Law and Public Safety Committee on Tuesday - and its previously passed Senate Bill S1322 - will also prevent ticket and arrest data to be posted within police barracks or stations’ common areas, which could be used “to create competition between officers with respect to arrests and citations,” as stated in the bill.

“Our dedicated law enforcement officers who put their lives on the line every day should be focused on protecting and serving the public,” said Assemblyman Hal Wirths, R-24th Dist., one of the bill’s sponsors. "It’s unfair to factor the volume of citations and arrests into an officer’s performance evaluation when we did away with quotas decades ago.”

Wirths noted there are much more effective performance measurements like decision-making abilities, response times and work ethic.

“By factoring arrests and tickets into performance evaluations, law enforcement agencies are in effect embracing quotas,” Assemblyman Parker Space, also R-24th Dist., and co-sponsor of the bill said.

Space said that officers deserve to be promoted based on merit, not outdated and banned quotas, calling attention to the fact that quotas are illegal because they harm communities and their relationships with law enforcement.

“It’s time to close the loophole,” Space said.

Both bills will continue to allow all arrest and citation statistics to be disseminated to New Jersey’s Superintendent of State Police, for inclusion in the state's Uniform Crime Report. If both bills are approved, the measure will go to the desk of Governor Phil Murphy to sign into law.

Questions or comments about this story? Contact me at: jennifer.miller@patch.com.