Tracy Oppenheimer
Reason
July 25, 2013
Auburn, Alabama is home to sprawling plains, Auburn University, and a
troubling police force. After the arrival of a new police chief in
2010, the department entered an era of ticket quotas and worse.
“When I first heard about the quotas I was appalled,” says former
Auburn police officer Justin Hanners, who claims he and other cops were
given directives to hassle, ticket, or arrest specific numbers of
residents per shift. “I got into law enforcement to serve and protect,
not be a bully.”
Hanners blew the whistle on the department’s tactics and was
eventually fired for refusing to comply and keep quiet. He says that
each officer was required to make 100 contacts each month, which
included tickets, arrests, field interviews, and warnings. This equates
to 72,000 contacts a year in a 50,000 person town. His claims are backed
up by audio recordings of his superiors he made. The Auburn police
department declined requests to be interviewed for this story.
“There are not that many speeders, there are not that many people
running red lights to get those numbers, so what [the police] do is they
lower their standards,” says Hanners. That led to the department
encouraging officers to arrest people that Hanners “didn’t feel like had
broken the law.”
Full article here
