If you stick a pin dead centre into a map of Illinois, you will find you have skewered the town of Normal.
It’s a sleepy college town, with a small police department – about 70 officers, all told. A cadet named Deborah Weir joined their ranks in March 1991. By all early accounts, she was an exemplary patrol officer; she was commended several times, even receiving the Police Good Conduct medal.
But in 2009, just a few months after she was moved to the overnight shift, she was told that she was missing her performance targets. After several verbal warnings, her sergeant gave her written notification, which had those targets listed on it.
The targets said she had to make at least one traffic stop every shift, two criminal arrests and four ordinance violation arrests per month, and one DUI arrest every other month. It was also made clear that if she did not make those numbers, she would be disciplined.
The night shift in Normal is quiet, and Weir did not make up her numbers. She was cautioned several more times, and then suspended.
So she decided to sue. On 4 November, she and two other patrol officers from the night shift, Brian Larimore and Todd Van Hoveln, filed a lawsuit against the Normal police department, calling the quotas she and other officers were given unconstitutional.
The only officer for whom it was put into writing was Weir, but the others say it was made perfectly clear to them, too: they had to meet the quotas, or be disciplined.
The three officers contend that because their shift was so quiet, filling their quotas required potential violations of citizens’ constitutional rights – specifically, the fourth amendment right to probable cause, and the 14th amendment right to due process of law, as well as protections under the Illinois state constitution against unlawful restraint and official misconduct.
In a little more than a month, the argument in Normal over whether police quotas are constitutional will recede, when a new state law comes into effect banning the practice.
Nonetheless, when the Guardian spoke to Rick Bleichner, the police chief of Normal, he did not deny that officers were given quotas. He said they “don’t call them quotas”, though. Instead, he said, they call them “work performance standards”.
“As far as why they’ve chosen to file the suit, I’m not sure,” Bleichner said. “We certainly don’t think it’s valid.”
Ed Yohnka is the director of communications and public policy of the Illinois branch of the American Civil Liberties Union. He told the Guardian that when police set quotas, it is often for revenue-collection purposes. Money from fines goes into city coffers. “They know if they set the quotas at a certain rate, they make X amount of revenue, and that’s money they need.”
Yohnka questioned the practice. “We should view law enforcement as being about keeping people safe, not simply producing revenue.”
The other reason police set quotas, he said, is because without them, it can be difficult to evaluate the performance of officers who patrol alone – as officers on the Normal night shift do. The pressure can encroach on the ability of officers to use that discretion properly, however, he said.
“When you begin to shade discretion in a particular way – because that’s the way the officer fills a quota – you’re getting into an area that is egregious,” Yohnka said. “It’s not the law enforcement that people want.”
The town of Normal has yet to make a formal response to the lawsuit, though Bleichner denied that his department in any way encouraged officers to make arrests without probable cause.
In the meantime, he confirmed that in Normal, “work performance standards” are still the norm.
