Do Iowa Police Officers Have a Monthly Quota for Citations?

You will often hear people question whether or not there is a certain number of tickets or citations that police officers have to hand out every month. At the time of writing, the date is October 30th, so do you need to worry about a police officer in Iowa being more likely to hand you a speeding ticket as we approach the end of the month?

You have maybe heard someone mention this every time you see someone pulled over towards the end of the month. "Well, they have to hit their quota this month." Is this actually true? Is there a certain number of tickets Iowa police officers need to hand out on a monthly basis and if there is, how many citations is it? What's the magic number?

As frustrating as getting a ticket can be, you really only have yourself to blame. In certain instances, you might have a legitimate gripe but 9 times out of 10, if you get a ticket, you likely deserved one. If you don't think you deserve the ticket, fight against it in court. It turns out that if you do receive a ticket, it's not because of some magic number that police officers have to hit every month. That's illegal in the state of Iowa.

Against The Law

According to Iowa Code 321.492A

A political subdivision or agency of the state shall not order, mandate, require, or in any other manner, directly or indirectly, suggest to a peace officer employed by the political subdivision or agency that the peace officer shall issue a certain number of traffic citations, police citations, memorandums of traffic violations, or memorandums of faulty equipment on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly basis.

Not only do police officers in Iowa not have a quota they need to hit every month or every year, it's against the law for any police station to order officers to do so. Banning monthly quotas is actually fairly common around the country.

Other States That Have Banned Ticket Quotas

According to Fox8, these states have also banned monthly quotas for police officers: Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

Now, there may be "speed traps" that exist in certain areas. These are used for "traffic enforcement is focused on extracting revenue from drivers instead of improving safety."

Ticket Funds

Fox8 also reports that the funds received from tickets are exactly divvied up the way you might think they are. Supposedly, law enforcement agencies "get very little from tickets that are issued, with a majority of the money going straight into city and state funds."

Does this make you feel better or worse? Now you know that if you received a ticket, at any point during the year, you received it because you broke the law. There's not a magic number of tickets that Iowa police officers have to hand out every month.