SALT LAKE CITY — A bill introduced in the Utah State Legislature would crack down on police agencies who use any form of a "quota" system for ticketing people.
House Minority Whip Jennifer Dailey-Provost, D-Salt Lake City, introduced House Bill 547, which would prohibit any type of performance based quotas by police agencies. The Utah State Legislature in 2018 banned police agencies from using quota systems, where officers are required to make a certain number of traffic stops or issue citations.
But a FOX 13 News investigation last year found that the Ogden Police Department was still operating under a performance based "point system," where officers claimed they had their job performance evaluations tied to a number of tickets.
On Wednesday, the House Minority Whip argued it was essentially a "quota by another name."
"We also want officers to ticket where appropriate, but in an age where we really want to make sure we’re doing everything to give people confidence in the police, we want to make sure if someone’s pulled over for speeding or some other infraction it’s not because somebody’s trying to meet a number," she told FOX 13 News in an interview.
The Ogden Police Department and city leaders have defended the practice as holding officers accountable for their work. Rep. Dailey-Provost said legislative research has found that while most police agencies in Utah do not do any kind of performance-based "quota" system, there are still "four or five" that do.
