Court sidesteps Ticket Quota case
The Appellate Division was recently given the opportunity to address whether a municipality violated the
statute prohibiting the adoption of ticket quota policies.
In Phillipsburg PBA Local 56 et al. v. Phillipsburg, a case
we litigated on behalf of the NJ State PBA for Phillipsburg
Local 56, the Court sidestepped reaching a decision on
the main issue despite a policy which, by its own terms,
violated the statute. But, the case is far from over. Recognizing the legitimacy of our claims, the Court remanded
the case to the trial court for further development of the
facts.
By way of background, state law prohibits police departments from
establishing quotas for arrests or citations for violations of Title 39, the
motor vehicle laws. In Phillipsburg, the police department implemented what it called a “Self-Directed Patrol Index” (SDPI) policy
which purported to establish a standard by which an officer’s work
performance was evaluated based upon compliance with the policy.
Officers could accrue points based upon a number of different
policing activities, including enforcement of Title 39. Officers who did
not meet the standard were subject to progressive discipline. In fact,
two officers that were disciplined for not meeting the standard were
also plaintiffs in the case.
The PBA presented evidence, based on the policy itself, that
enforcement of Title 39 was involved in the vast majority of policing
activities for which points could be earned under the SDPI policy. It
was undisputed that at least eight of the 13 policing activity categories
for which an officer could earn almost 70 percent of all available
points under the policy involved enforcement of Title 39. Based upon
these facts alone, the PBA argued that the policy was an unlawful
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quota policy dressed up to look like an evaluation of performance. The trial court judge agreed with the PBA’s position and concluded that the town’s policy was an
impermissible quota as it related to enforcement of Title 39
offenses. However, the trial court judge did not invalidate
the entire policy because she also concluded that part of
the policy, not involving enforcement of Title 39 offenses,
did not violate the statute.
The township appealed the trial court’s order, and the
PBA cross-appealed to the extent that the trial court did not
invalidate the entire policy. While the Appellate Division
was not prepared to conclude, based only on the policy itself, that the
entire policy was an impermissible quota, the Court was also
emphatic in noting that a municipality cannot dress up a quota policy
and try to call it something else to avoid the prohibitions of the statute.
The Court stated that a municipality “cannot avoid the statutory prohibition by crafting a carefully worded policy that does not, when read
literally, violate a statutory mandate, but does so when implemented.”
In other words, a municipality cannot get through the back door what
it cannot get through the front door. Significantly, the Appellate Division also stated that it was inclined to agree with the PBA’s position but
could not do so without additional factual support.
For that reason, the Court remanded the case to the trial court for a
determination as to whether officers “can and do routinely satisfy the
policy without issuing traffic citations, or whether officers have been
meeting the standards in the policy by issuing a minimum number of
citations within a specific period of time.” Because the policy at issue
was updated in 2011, the Court felt that the parties would be able to
determine whether the policy was in fact operating as an impermissi-