When a quota is not a quota

By KATHRYN WEXLER and SUE CARLTON

© St. Petersburg Times, published May 25, 2000

A ticket a day keeps the sergeant away. Or so the old cop saying goes.

Cops don't like writing 'em. Everyone else hates getting 'em.

The only people who get happy about speeding tickets are police brass. Supervisors can rest assured that when patrol officers issue lots of tickets, they're clearly doing more out there than catching catnaps in their patrol cars.

So police weren't smiling several months ago when an official at the Tampa Police Department's westside district distributed a hand-written document that showed that, on average, officers issued 10.3 moving violations per month in 1999.

Some officers felt distributing the numbers was an unspoken threat: Make that monthly ticket average. Or else.

The problem is, requiring officers to write a minimal number of tickets starts to sound like a quota.

And the only thing the public seems to hate more than tickets is the idea that some cop just hit them up for $100 plus because he has to please his sergeant.

Consequently, the word "quota" at the Police Department is an epithet. Police supervisors, however, insist that numbers do reflect productivity.

"I refuse to say, "Here are the numbers you must make,' because that is a quota and even though that's not a bad thing, the perception for the public is that is a bad thing," said Tampa police Maj. K.C. Newcomb, who supervises the westside and is proud of raising his cops' average of five tickets a month in 1997 and 1998 to twice that last year.

"I don't care how you color it up, it's a ticket quota," said Jim Thompson, the ever outspoken president of the police union, the West Coast Police Benevolent Association.

In fact, the PBA has taken up the call to drive a stake through the heart of ticket quotas once and for all. They'll be pushing a state bill next year outlawing ticket quotas for municipalities and county agencies throughout Florida.

But even Thompson said he understands the bind the issue creates for senior police officials.

"I don't know what the answer is," Thompson said. "If I did, I'd give it to them so they could use it.

BAD MOON RISING: Lately, this town has felt more like smoldering Miami than tepid Tampa. For cops, the past weeks have probably been the worst in recent memory.

In the quiet suburbs, a pizza delivery driver is shot dead, a restaurant co-owner wounded. Days later, a successful lawyer is killed. His ex-wife, who miraculously survives a leap from the Sunshine Skyway bridge, is charged.

A spate of arsons plague the city. An armed robbery suspect shoots a sheriff's deputy in the face, then is killed in a spray of gunfire. Finally, last Friday, it seemed as if all of Ybor City was ablaze -- on the second anniversary of the shooting deaths of two respected Tampa police detectives, Ricky Childers and Randy Bell.

"It was surreal," said Hillsborough sheriff's Sgt. Rod Reder.

What makes a streak of violence erupt in such a short span of time? Is it coincidence? The beginnings of the sweltering heat? The cusp of summer vacation?

Those who have worked the third watch have their theories.

"It's the full moon," said Reder. "Midnight deputies and (emergency room) nurses will tell you for a fact. The full moon has something to do with it."

EARLY ENDING TO AN EARLY EXIT: A guest at the Orient Road jail recently wanted to end his stay prematurely.

That in itself isn't too unusual. Officials have to deal with a few attempted escapes every year.

But Kurt Smith's plan to break loose revealed an unusual ingenuity.

It seems Smith, brought a few months ago from state prison in Starke to face a federal charge of fraud in Hillsborough County, amassed quite a collection of odds and ends from other jailmates for his shot at freedom.

A few of the items detention deputies found in Smith's cell, after a jailhouse tip:

Civilian underwear.

Boxer shorts restitched with metal threads to look like civilian shorts.

A 2-foot-long metal table leg. ("I don't know how he got that," said Col. David Parrish, who oversees county jails.)

Two rolls of tape.

Two soap bottles filled with bleach.

Heavy wire, sharpened to a point. ("We still haven't figured out where that came from," said Parrish.)

Maps of the Tampa Bay area and the United States.

Smith's plan was to take out a deputy and use his key to open the first of two doors that leads to an ambulance vestibule, then bust through the second door, which has to be popped open from a master control room, Parrish said.

"I took the guy very seriously," Parrish said. "He had the plan all laid out."

Smith, already serving a life sentence for grand theft, burglary, drug and lots of other charges, had planned to bust out of the jail's medical unit, where he was being kept for a medical condition, Parrish said. Now he's in solitary confinement.

"Just because they're in (the) medical (unit) doesn't mean they suddenly change their stripes," Parrish said.

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