Madison Police Department Chief Mike Koval defended MPD’s traffic ticket citations in a blog post on their website Thursday, detailing the process of issuing tickets and the factors taken into account.
Koval described an incident where a man, whom he pulled over, accused Koval of singling him out and assumed the police department has a quota for number of tickets to issue. He defended MPD, citing the Wisconsin state statute that prohibits law enforcements from issuing a specific number of tickets.
“In speaking on behalf of the City of Madison Police Department, there is no quota system for traffic tickets,” Koval wrote in the post.
Koval also described how MPD often tries to avoid issuing legal punishment and searches for alternative methods rather than issuing citations and tickets.
“Officers are challenged to think out of the box in finding creative means to avoid citations and arrest,” Koval wrote.
Koval emphasized MPD’s reluctance to always issue citations and instead focus on educating drivers on following the law.
“By adopting a philosophy of gaining compliance that is not wholly reliant on writing citations for everything, our ‘actions’ are more in line with our lofty platitudes expressed as part of our values as MPD Officers,” he wrote.
Koval alluded to MPD’s emphasis on creating safer driving conditions, adhering to the “three Es”: education, enforcement and engineering improvements.
In 2015, there have been eight traffic fatalities. Koval stressed that traffic tickets and citations are solely intended for the safety of drivers and motorists.
“There is every hope and desire to make our City a safer motoring community, achieved through a multi-pronged approach incorporating education, compliance incentives, enforcement, reasonableness, equity and respectfulness as our benchmarks,” Koval wrote.
