Lisle police officials are defending their department’s practice of using ticket quotas to help determine raises for village police officers.
Police Chief Michael Damico told the Lisle Village Board Monday that the number of traffic and parking citations an officer writes makes up just a portion of how the department’s evaluation process works.
Lisle police union members in recent weeks have derided the practice, saying the quota system is forcing them to target cars in beater condition in order to run up their ticket totals.
Union leaders said the village’s evaluation system is outmoded, and they claim patrol officers must write more than 280 traffic tickets and 120 parking tickets each year to be eligible for top raises.
Damico said officers receive an automatic pay increase on or about May 1 of each year, and receive a performance-based merit increase in November.
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Patrol officers are graded in six categories, Damico said: safety practices; rules procedures and regulations; inner personnel skills; work knowledge, quality and judgment; appearance and care of work area; and “work volume initiative.”
During the last three years, the chief said, 12 evaluations have seen officers earn zero evaluation points in the work volume category and still receive a “meets standards” rating.
Department statistics also show that in the months leading up to evaluations last year, the number of tickets being written in Lisle did not jump as officers tried to meet their quotas.
“It is interesting to note that in August and September in 2000, as we approached the end of the evaluation period, that those two months are the lowest months of number of citations issued during that 12-month period,” he said.
Union leaders said they expected Monday’s deluge of statistics, and said the reality is that the system is driving cops to spend most of their time on Lisle’s main streets looking for violators.
“To me, they played the type of games I knew they would,” union member John Ward said. “With statistics, you can manipulate them any way you want to.”
Ward said the demonstration did not show how service calls affected the totals.
Ward and union president John Gaw said they were upset that the union was not allowed to speak to the board Monday. Village leaders said the session was a workshop where outside input typically is not accepted.
Gaw also said he has not been able to discuss the issue in a labor management conference he has proposed. “It’s apparent they just don’t want to hear our side,” he said.
Gaw said he wanted to show the board that without the points from the work volume category, no officer can hit the “exceeds standards” rating that brings the highest raises.
Gaw said he hopes the union and village leaders will be in contract talks by the end of next month. Union leaders said that despite Monday’s meeting, they will bring the quota system to the negotiating table.
The current 3-year police contract expires at the end of April.