JEFFERSON CITY - Continuing an effort to reform Missouri’s municipal courts, Senator Eric Schmitt, R-Glendale filed legislation to ban traffic ticket quotas across the state. The legislation will ban direct or implied quotas from being imposed on officers.
“This reform will protect citizens from being treated like ATMs by city officials looking to prop up their bloated local governments,” Schmitt said. “I continually heard from law enforcement that nobody became a police officer to write traffic tickets all day, every day. This reform will allow police officers to serve and protect their citizens, and not force them to focus on generating revenue for their cities. For too long, bureaucrats have subtly, and sometimes not so subtly, implemented traffic ticket quotas in their cities to drum up more and more revenue to keep their bureaucracies running.”
Earlier this year a letter from the mayor of Edmundson to his police officers surfaced which implied the officers needed to write more tickets to raise revenue for the city, and to preserve their salaries. In the letter, the mayor said: “I wish to take this opportunity to remind you that the tickets that you write do add to the revenue on which the P.D. budget is established and will directly affect pay adjustments at budget time.”
The mayor concluded, “As budget time approaches, please make a self evaluation of your work habits and motivations, then make the changes that you see that will be fair to yourself and the city.”
The only winner in this scenario will be the city coffers of Edmundson; the police officers and citizens will unequivocally lose out.
“Bureaucrats are on notice after the passage of Senate Bill 5 that they cannot continue to rely on traffic tickets to pay for their bloated local governments,” Schmitt said. “Banning quotas will further protect citizens from taxation by citation schemes drawn up by bureaucrats.” |
