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."