
PRODUCTIVITY'S THE TICKET: KELLY
By STEPHANIE GASKELL
May 14, 2003 -- Police Commissioner Ray Kelly yesterday
denied union charges that cops are being told to write a blizzard
of tickets to help fill the city's $3.8 billion budget gap.
"No one has ever given any direction - certainly
nothing from the mayor's office, nothing from my office - telling
officers to go out and give summonses to raise revenue,"
Kelly said during a City Council budget hearing.
Kelly was responding to accusations by Pat Lynch,
president of the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, that officers
were being forced to meet a ticket quota to raise money for the
city.
While Kelly agreed that the department has "productivity
goals," he said they are not "quotas."
"I think a quota portends that something onerous
or punitive is going to happen to you," he said. "Obviously,
there are some goals in every job."
But union leaders say it's a matter of semantics.
"Productivity expectations at the commissioner's
level become quotas at the police officer's level," said
PBA spokesman Al O'Leary. "A police officer puts a form in
to take a day off and is told, 'Go out and get me 10 summonses
first.' It's wrong and it's common practice and it's got to stop."
