WIS News 10 - Columbia, South Carolina | Charleston traffic cops ordered to write more tickets

Charleston traffic cops ordered to write more tickets

CHARLESTON, SC (WCSC) - Internal memos from the Charleston Police Department order officers to write more traffic tickets. Police commanders claim they are trying to educate drivers and prevent deadly accidents.

"Our citation productivity from week to week is not where it should be," Traffic Enforcement commander Lt. Chip Searson wrote in a memo dated September 19. "I cannot simply defend how some can produce 60-plus citations and five arrests per week and others produce 30-50 citations only per week."

When Searson was asked about the memo, he said he was not instructed to tell officers to write more tickets.

"No one has come to me and said, 'you need to write more tickets, we need the money,'" Lt. Searson said. "That is not what the Charleston Police Department is about."

Through Oct. 22 of last year, city officers wrote 38,174 traffic citations. Through the same date this year, cops wrote 35,045 tickets. That's a drop of nearly ten percent. 

Lt. Searson says he ordered more citations to be given out partly as an educational tool to make lawbreakers think about their driving.

"Probably one of the most common means for any law enforcement agency to enforce the highway, to adjust driver behavior is the issuance of a citation," Searson said.

In his memo, Searson made it clear he wanted better results on the street. He warned of consequences and changes if the goals were not met that include "moving shifts and personnel around, permanent days off, etc."

"I wanted to get my point across and I wanted to be serious. It's a very serious thing," he said. "I take it personally and I take it very serious as the commander of the traffic unit."

According to the memo, the police department has three traffic squads. Lt. Searson has ordered them to write 700 traffic citations a week and also have a total of six checkpoints.

"In my opinion, this is a production quota, like any other production quota," said Charleston constitutional attorney John Harrell.

But Harrell says the police department is not doing anything illegal.

"It is conduct by the police department that would seem to promote overzealous enforcement," said Harrell.

Harrell cited a 2002 North Carolina case in which a police officer sued his department and the Department of Motor Vehicles, claiming they forced him to write too many tickets as part of a quota system.

The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers South Carolina, ruled in the police department's favor, saying an officer can stop a driver if there is reasonable suspicion the driver is breaking the law.

Lt. Searson says whether drivers think it's a quota system or something else, his officers will continue to give out tickets, all in the name of safety.

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