Look out, leadfoot.
Belleville police are making more traffic stops because of a new rule that they make two self-initiated contacts per 12-hour shift. Those can include any combination of traffic tickets, traffic warnings and field interview reports.
In January 2010, before the requirement was in place for those assigned to patrol, officers wrote 22 speeding tickets and 13 warning tickets. Last month, the first full month of the new rule, officers wrote 210 speeding tickets and 165 warning tickets.
Also, for all of 2010, police made 2,259 traffic stops. In January, the first full month of the two-contacts-per-day standard, police made 1,603 stops -- 70 percent of last year's total, all in one month.
Police Chief William Clay said it's not just busy work, and it's not about money from tickets. It's his initiative to get officers more proactively engaged with the public. He thinks that's the best way to address crime. In other words, the more contact officers have with the public, the more likely the officers are to find people with drugs, guns or arrest warrants.
And he may be on to something. Though weapons arrests stayed the same, warrant arrests in Belleville were up by 40 percent last month over the same month last year, and cannabis arrests were up 130 percent. Capt. Donald Sax, who provided the statistics, couldn't say exactly how many of the warrants and cannabis arrests came from traffic stops, but he said that's where they usually come from.
About a year-and-a-half before Clay began the requirement in December, he had done away with a long-standing 10-ticket-per-month quota because, at a law-enforcement training seminar for administrators, he heard an expert talk about the benefits of leaving the process alone, and not applying any type of quota. Plus, Clay thought the ticket quota took away from officer discretion.
But then he found out many patrol officers' numbers for tickets, warnings and field interview reports had dropped off dramatically when he took away the quota.
The News-Democrat, through the Illinois Freedom of Information Act, obtained a list of the number of traffic tickets, warnings and field interview reports -- all bunched together in one category -- that individual officers of all ranks made between Jan. 1, 2010, and Nov. 20, before the new two-contacts requirement. For the 67 officers of all ranks in the patrol division, they ranged from one during the time period to 603. Seventeen of them made fewer than 20 contacts. Clay himself had more than seven of the patrol officers, though he admitted it's easier for him to spot violations because he drives an unmarked vehicle.
Clay wants to bring the numbers back. He said his officers won't catch any grief from him if they never write a single traffic ticket. He just wants them to get more involved.
Lt. Ronald Sprinz was the person in the patrol division with only one initiated stop. He said that's because of his position. As a lieutenant, he's at the helm in the office during his shifts, while patrol officers and sergeants are the ones on the streets. The 23-year-veteran of the department said that when he patrolled, he would regularly write 30 traffic tickets per month. He thinks the chief's new rule is a reasonable expectation. And he said that as a whole, the officers on his shift are happy with it.
"I think it's part of the job," Sprinz said.
Though three officers on a recent night shift didn't want to comment on the record. But one of them said that a few officers are complaining about it, but he doesn't think two contacts per shift are any big deal.
Officer Norb Normansell was at the top of the list, with 603. That's three times more than his closest competitor. The most senior officer, with 35 years on the force, he was named the department's Officer of the Year for that and other reasons.
He said that when looking at the numbers, it's important to keep the individual district in mind. He said there aren't as many police reports to take in his district -- Frank Scott Parkway West to Illinois 157 on Main Street, then over to Illinois 161. So, he writes more traffic tickets and warnings than other officers who may be busier taking police reports. He said he hasn't heard any complaints from officers about the new rule.
"The amount of contacts that he's wanting is reasonable, I think," Normansell said.
David Klinger, an associate professor in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, said that a quota for traffic tickets can present questions, such as whether "bureaucracy drives police behavior." He said that just requiring contacts, though, is no different than a sales manager telling his or her staff to make a certain number of cold calls.
"So long as it's that type of a quota, it makes perfect sense," he said.
None of the other metro-east police departments contacted by the News-Democrat, Granite City, Collinsville, O'Fallon, Fairview Heights, and Swansea, have ticket or contact quotas.
But Swansea Police Chief Michael Arnold sees what Clay is getting at.
"Two contacts a day is nothing, it really is," Arnold said. "You can knock that out in the first hour of your shift."
Until two months ago, Collinsville required patrol officers to make 400 contacts during the course of six months, Assistant Police Chief Tom Coppotelli said. Those could be traffic stops, pedestrian or vehicle checks, warrant arrests, or any number of other things. Now, the department leaves it up to supervisors to make sure the officers are being proactive. He said there was no major reason the department stopped the 400-contacts rule, and he said there's no indication that the numbers have dropped off since ending it."
"The chief felt that these guys and gals know what they have to do," Coppotelli said.
The campus police at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign do have a quota -- three contacts per 10-hour shift. Chief Barbara O'Connor, who also is the director of the Police Training Institute at the university, said those can include anything from assisting someone with a flat tire to traffic stops. For her, she said, it's not all about the number of contacts, but also the quality.
"At the end of the day, you're not going to discipline an officer for not doing three contacts," she said.
Belleville police still have to abide by state law and only stop drivers under reasonable suspicion. Beyond speeding and among many other things, that can include headlights being out, no front license plate, no seat belt, loud muffler, loud radio or use of a cell phone in a construction zone.
Though Belleville's new requirement is primarily for officers and sergeants assigned to patrol, Clay expects other officers to step up their numbers as well. He said some commanders of other divisions have their own expectations for traffic stops.
"I'm not giving them anything they can't do," Clay said.
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
