Arrest quotas are illegal in New York State; Commissioner Bill Bratton has spoken out against them. One Staten Island precinct, however, is using a quota system for arrests and has even made a game out of it, a new lawsuit alleges. A dozen officers are suing the city, claiming that they are routinely denied both overtime and vacation, and are threatened with firing for not meeting quotas.
According to the New York Post, the suit alleges that commanding officers at the 122nd Precinct in Staten Island’s New Dorp section created a points-based system to reward or punish officers based on their number of arrests. According to cops involved in the lawsuit, officers need to earn at least three points a month in order to earn vacation and overtime and avoid watchtower duty. Felony arrests earn officers 1.5 points, and misdemeanors are worth 1 point.
“[The game system] turns a violation into a misdemeanor and a misdemeanor into a felony, and usually turns what could be a discretionary situation into an arrest situation,” Anthony Miranda, chairman of the National Latino Officers Association, told the Post.
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