Stamford police officers pulled over nearly three times as many drivers in May than the previous month after a directive issued by police brass to focus on driving violations.
State law prohibits ticket quotas, and at a police commission meeting last month, Chief Robert Nivakoffwas cautious not to characterize the directive as a quota.
"Every car has to make certain amount of traffic stops now," Nivakoff said.
The chief went on to say that traffic stops were up exponentially. In fact, police officers pulled over 2,077 drivers in May, the first month when the directive went into effect, more than three times as many motorists than in April, according to department data. Experts say the new emphasis on pulling over drivers comes at a cost: It ties up already strained manpower and may help create an undue impression that officers are under a quota system.
Assistant Chief Francis Cronin, the head of patrol operations and a former internal affairs lieutenant who was promoted earlier this year, said he met with patrol supervisors after he was first sworn in this April and told them to pick up traffic enforcement. He said he told officers to make at least two or three stops a day.
The increased focus on the traffic stops is a way to combat aggressive driving and make the streets safer, acting as a deterrent against people running traffic lights, stop signs and speeding through residential areas, Cronin said. One patrol supervisor said he gets at least one complaint a day from residents about drivers running red lights.
"These streets are not meant to be doing 60 miles per hour," Cronin said.
Officers were given latitude with how to resolve the traffic stop, either by issuing a ticket or a warning. Connecticut state law bans ticket quotas and prohibits law enforcement agencies from asking officers to issue a certain number of traffic summonses in a given time, but it does allow the number of tickets issued by an officer to be used as a performance measure.
"The emphasis is incrementally doing a little bit at the end of the week and the month and the quarter," Cronin said. "It shows a message to tell people to slow down and be courteous."
Traffic stop data from the Stamford Police Department show a stark increase in traffic stops in May, the month after Cronin was sworn in and when officers pulled over 2,077 motorists. The amount of traffic stops in May alone caused a 21 percent spike in traffic stops when comparing the first five months this year with the same time period in 2009.
Thomas Aveni, the executive director of the Police Policy Studies Council in New Hampshire, said having officers preoccupy themselves with traffic stops creates a trade-off in the department's allocation of resources, especially in busier patrol districts.
Spotting a marijuana roach in an ash tray, for example, could keep an officer occupied for the next two or three hours, Aveni said.
"Some say officer-initiated stops are, in fact, proactive patrol, and that might be true to one extent," Aveni said. "But it just depends on what you're giving up in exchange for it."
The new policy may help suppress illegal activity such as the drug trade -- some narcotics arrests begin as routine traffic stops that lead to vehicle searches -- but that happens only indirectly, according to Aveni.
A veteran law enforcement officer turned consultant, Aveni called the traffic stop policy a "public relations nightmare," saying it could lead to the perception that a quota system was in place. In a police department that places an emphasis on traffic enforcement, performance standards become another term for quota, Aveni said.
"Everybody finds a way to get around the limits that were set," Aveni said.
Aveni said municipal police departments should allocate their resources to the most pressing problem at a given time.
In Stamford, violent crime and narcotics activity do not reach the same levels as they do in other Connecticut cities of similar size. Congestion and traffic enforcement, or the lack of it, was an issue brought up by Democratic mayoral candidate David Martin. And patrol supervisor, Lt. Phil Mazzucco, said aggressive driving is a major concern among residents in his district.
"We know there's an issue here, and with the limited manpower we have, we're trying to address it as much as possible," Mazzucco said.
Mazzucco said that when patrol supervisors receive complaints of speeding or, for example, cars passing stopped school buses, they try to post a squad car in the area. Ideally, the department would have a traffic enforcement unit to patrol problem areas, but manpower is already stretched at the Police Department.
Sgt. Joseph Kennedy, president of the Stamford Police Association, said the new focus on traffic stops is a way to remain proactive with limited resources.
"Our main concern was that whether they were going to implement any kind of quota system, and that's not what they're doing at all," Kennedy said. "Our department has never been about that type of stuff anyway."
==============================
Please send your comments, news tips and press releases to StamfordRoundup@gmail.com
No comments:
Post a Comment