by Ryan Keith, Associated Press
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) - State troopers now have extra motivation to write speeding tickets, help stranded motorists and even visit local police departments: Their jobs may depend on it.
Under a new directive from Illinois State Police management, all troopers must perform those and other tasks to pass a point system that measures on-the-job performance.
The system rewards trooper activity in 11 areas. Writing tickets or warnings counts for one point, as does assisting motorists and filing incident reports. Helping at an accident scene and filing other crime reports can earn troopers two points.
The points are tallied at the end of each month, and troopers who fall short of the goal set in each of the agency’s 21 districts can face discipline such as counseling and suspensions.
State police administrators say they implemented the policy in recent months to squeeze better performance from 2,100 troopers and a $400 million annual budget.
“We have a huge responsibility to manage our resources,” agency spokesman Capt. Dave Sanders said. “We don’t manage in a vacuum. We’re working with taxpayer money.”
But the troopers’ union contends the initiative punishes troopers and the public unfairly because it mandates that troopers write more tickets at the end of each month.
“They can deny it until they’re blue in the face, but if you’re disciplining troopers for not writing tickets, it’s a quota,” said Guy Studach, legal counsel for Illinois Troopers Lodge 41.
The agency has had a point system in place since at least the late 1980s, but that usually served as a wakeup call for troopers whose job performance was lacking.
The new system approved last year applies to all troopers all the time and has been implemented in various ways statewide.
In District 13, which covers seven southwestern Illinois counties and is based in Perry County, troopers have to accumulate 10 points per day on average.
Lt. Charles Mays, the district’s commander, says that’s a modest standard because his troopers stay busy covering the large, rural district. The initiative was implemented in March and the district has yet to punish a trooper for not making the grade, Mays said.
“All we require is that the trooper do something for their money,” Mays said. “I don’t think we’re asking for the moon.”
District 8, which covers five counties around Peoria, requires six points each day. Neighboring District 14, which covers five counties around Macomb, mandates six points per 10-hour shift.
Other districts require seven or eight points a day, with some requiring a certain percentage of tickets to be written for every warning handed out.
Sanders said letting each district set the point standard is important because the workload is so different in each area. Regardless of the point total, though, the new system doesn’t endorse ticket quotas to meet the goals, he said.
“We don’t tell our officers to go out and write a specific number of citations,” Sanders said.
But Studach, the union’s lawyer, says troopers have no choice at the end of the month if they’re short of points because police work is unpredictable.
He said the agency made the change with little input from troopers, and the public will soon see the difference.
“There was no problem before that, and now it’s a broad, sweeping change,” Studach said. “There’s no place for it.”