L.A. Police Quota for Tickets Alleged

In another sign of the increasingly public antagonism between Los Angeles Police Chief Bernard C. Parks and the union representing the majority of his officers, union leaders charged Thursday that the chief’s new focus on accountability has led at least one captain to impose a quota system to pressure patrol officers to write more tickets.

“The captains in this department are running scared,” said Gary Morgan, a director of the Los Angeles Police Protective League. “Their performances are being judged by the chief. They don’t want to be criticized, so they all want their numbers [of citations and arrests] up. It’s becoming a numbers game and that’s not in the best interest of the community or community policing.”

Morgan said two patrol officers have filed grievances against Capt. Robert Hansohn, who commands the LAPD’s Harbor Division, alleging that he improperly evaluates officers by comparing them to their colleagues in 12 categories, including writing traffic and parking citations, conducting field interviews, handling radio calls and arresting criminals.

Top LAPD officials, including Hansohn, deny that his performance evaluation criteria establish quotas. The system, they contend, merely helps supervisors determine whether officers are doing their jobs and are productive.

“I don’t believe in quotas; it’s just a way of measuring performance,” Hansohn said. “It’s what’s done in corporate America.”

Cmdr. Dave Kalish, a spokesman for the chief, also denied the existence of such quotas.

“Productivity statistics are not the sole measurement of an officer’s job performance, but they certainly are an indicator of what they are doing in the field,” Kalish said.

Hansohn said the only officers who have complained about his system are the ones who are unproductive. He also said he has used his evaluation system for seven years and was not influenced by Parks’ philosophy.

“I believe in making sure that people who work for me work hard,” he said. But Hansohn also said he is aware of the chief’s focus on demonstrable results. “It’s a new era of accountability,” he said.

Since his appointment as chief last summer, Parks has demanded that LAPD employees be held accountable for producing results, particularly crime reduction. He has reorganized much of the department to achieve better accountability at all ranks.

Kalish said Parks is keeping a close eye on his command staff to ensure that his philosophy is not being misinterpreted. “It’s not the numbers that matter, it’s the end result,” he said.

Police union representatives, however, contend that Parks’ emphasis on accountability has fostered an oppressive atmosphere within the force, causing some captains to overreact. Union officials allege that Hansohn’s quantitative rating system establishes an illegal quota that punishes officers who fail to attain arbitrary goals in ticket writing and other police functions.

“It’s not fair to the officers or the citizens of the city,” Morgan said. Officers should be judged by their overall performance in the field as witnessed by supervisors, he said.

Under Hansohn’s system, supervisors tally all the arrests, citations, interviews and other patrol functions and determine what the average activity is for each category. Officers are then evaluated on how their work compares to the averages. Hansohn said there are other factors that supervisors look at when evaluating an officer’s overall performance, including safety skills, reliability and judgment issues.

“The brass is sidestepping the word ‘quota,’ but that’s exactly what it is,” said one patrol officer, who works in the Harbor Division but asked to remain anonymous. “Everybody is running scared.”

Because of Hansohn’s evaluation process, the officer said he now feels pressured to give tickets to motorists whom he previously would have let off with warnings.

“None of us wants a negative evaluation, we don’t want to damage our careers,” the officer said. “But this [philosophy] is turning the public against us.”

The flap over Hansohn’s performance evaluations has highlighted the growing friction between the chief and the police union.

The chief and union representatives have clashed over a number of Parks’ initiatives since he took office. The relationship soured particularly after Parks eliminated a three-day workweek that was overwhelmingly supported by patrol officers, but which the chief said reduced police services.

Further battles ensued after Parks overhauled the LAPD’s complaint process and proposed changes to the city’s charter.

“The perception of the cop on the street is that most of the chief’s initiatives have been negative to them,” said Dave Hepburn, president of the Police Protective League. “They feel like he treats officers as if they were little problems that need to be stamped out.”

Hepburn said the chief has been running the department in a very “autocratic style,” refusing to seek any input from the officers.

Parks’ reputation as a strong disciplinarian also hasn’t gone over well with officers, he said.

“It’s no honeymoon,” Kalish said. “Part of the tension is the natural relationship between labor and management. . . . He’s concerned about morale and employee benefits, but this chief of police clearly does what he believes is in the best interest of the people of this city.”

Parks has lashed back at times, accusing the union’s leadership of being out of touch with most of the officers.

“It’s true, they disagree on a lot of issues,” Kalish added. “But I’m an optimist, I think the relationship will improve over time.”