By Ryan Osborne
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
ARLINGTON, Texas — Fifteen Arlington police officers are on leave after a Police Department audit revealed that over the last three months they had reported traffic stops that were never conducted, a department spokesman said Tuesday.
The officers, all assigned to the patrol division, were placed on paid leave Tuesday morning, said Lt. Christopher Cook, a police spokesman. Their names have not been released.
The audit, a periodic review conducted by supervisors, found that no motorists were contacted and no tickets were issued during the reported stops, Cook said.
“These allegations are serious and represent conduct that is not consistent with departmental expectations,” Police Chief Will Johnson said in a statement.
The accused officers reported on their in-car computers that they had made a traffic stop at a particular address but did not give any names, a source close to the investigation said. Some of the officers listed license plate numbers, the source said.
The alleged falsified stops were discovered when supervisors could not find accompanying dash cam video of the stops, the source said.
The accused officers were not interviewed by internal affairs before they were placed on leave, Cook said. The investigation could take up to two months.
Officers are required to report driver demographics, the reason for the traffic stop, whether an arrest occurred and whether a search was conducted during the stop, Cook said. That data are used to compile the department’s annual racial-profiling report.
“At this point in our investigation, it would appear that the number of traffic stops in question would not compromise the department’s annual report,” Cook said. “However, investigators are still assessing the full impact of the actions of the officers on the department.”
Cook declined to comment on whether the department knew why the officers would falsify traffic stops. He said traffic stop activity is one of many factors used to measure an officer’s performance.
Traffic ticket quotas are illegal in Texas.
Randy Moore, an attorney with the Texas Municipal Patrolman’s Association who is representing two of the accused officers, said Tuesday afternoon that he hadn’t seen the full complaint against the officers. But he said Arlington, like most police departments, evaluates officers based on how their numbers compare with others on their shift.
“I’m not condoning falsifying or lying,” Moore said, “but it’s hypocritical of department leadership to evaluate officers based on statistics and then investigate and charge them on complaints that are based on statistics.”
In 2014, state charges against eight Fort Worth police officers in a traffic citation scandal were dropped when allegations of a department ticket quota arose. An attorney for one of the officers alleged that Fort Worth officers were required to write four tickets an hour as part of a federal grant program.
J.P. Mason, president of the Arlington Police Association, declined to comment Tuesday, and the Arlington Municipal Patrolman’s Association could not be reached for comment.
Arlington has about 625 sworn officers.
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