COLORADO SPRINGS- Of course it’s imperative to take a hard line on dishonest officers of the law. But I have mixed emotions about these two: 2 MOTORCYCLE COPS FALSIFIED TICKET NUMBERS. They weren’t issuing unwarranted tickets. No, they were in trouble for wanting NOT to give out unwarranted tickets. Should that be discouraged? Let’s give the officers a medal for bringing a bad bit of law enforcement policy to light. But I want to see a third policeman in bigger trouble. incredibly, “A police spokesman said there are no ticket quotas.”

Wouldn’t you say that policemen who lie to us about how laws are being enforced are about as bad as it could possibly get? “Lt David Whitlock said no such order exists in the General Orders that govern Colorado Springs police.” Why were the traffic officers compelled to falsify their ticket numbers? The forked-tongue spokesman “could not rule out the possibility of a ‘minimum performance standard.’”

There it is. Totalitarian doublespeak. We don’t torture people in jail, we just have ‘minimum comfort requirements.’ What assholes!

We don’t want quotas by any definition! We may laugh about means to keep police officers from the donut shops, but it’s up to their supervisors to make sure they are doing their jobs. We don’t need them returning with scalps to prove they’ve been busy, regardless whether their victims were law-breakers. Can we mandate that traffic cops write forty tickets a day if they don’t encounter 40 infractions on their rounds? By relying on revenue from traffic citations to meet their budget requirements, the CSPD may be encouraging worse falsification. False charges, false witness, false arrest.

How exactly did management catch up with these two? Was there a budget shortfall when forecasted ticket earnings -based on the policemen’s paperwork- did not match the Municipal Court takings?