Missouri AG sues Marshfield, alleging traffic ticket quota scheme and attempted coverup

The Missouri Attorney General’s Office is accusing Marshfield police of creating illegal traffic ticket quotas and trying to cover it up.

State attorneys filed suit in Webster County on Monday saying they had “credible information” from whistleblowers indicating the city and Police Chief Doug Fannen are “flagrantly violating” state laws against setting quotas to generate revenue.

If proven true, the alleged behavior would violate a law Attorney General Eric Schmitt wrote as a state senator to crack down on municipalities writing traffic tickets to fund themselves.

The state attorneys also accuse Fannen of trying to intimidate an officer who confronted him about the illegal quota scheme.

They also ask for a judge to order the city to stop.

The city of Marshfield said Monday it planned to issue a news release regarding the allegations but had not provided one to the News-Leader by 5 p.m. Tuesday despite multiple requests.

According to the lawsuit, Fannen began encouraging officers to increase citations in 2018.

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The state says he told department employees to write 16 citations per month and said their performance evaluations would reflect whether they met that minimum.

State attorneys say he’s followed up, too, calling officers who issued fewer than 16 citations per month into his office to discuss their performance.

They also assert that starting in January 2019, Fannen began posting monthly citation numbers to the department bulletin board, though he stopped briefly after the attorney general’s office sued the city of Diamond for operating an illegal quota scheme.

State attorneys cite those same statistics as proof that things changed last year, noting that citations increased from 383 in 2016 to 646 in 2017 to 1,386 in 2018.

They also note that the number of warnings issued declined in the same time period and that citations issued on Interstate 44 went from 0 in 2016 to 8 in 2017 to 241 in 2018.

State attorneys further emphasize that the quotas and jumps in citations have nothing to do with public safety.

Instead, they say, it’s about bringing in money for the city, citing as evidence the department’s decision to create a new “traffic enforcement officer” position in early 2019.

According to a proposed city budget for 2019, the department asked for a $35,321 increase in wages to hire the officer and said “the way we would pay for this position … is that there are five common ordinance violations that are currently written during traffic enforcement.”

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The document goes on to list the fine amounts for those violations and estimates how much the officer could “generate in fines per year” assuming six citations a shift and $85 per fine, which amounted to $176,600.

According to the lawsuit, that officer is required to write at least nine citations per shift or 144 citations per month.

Around the same time the new position was proposed, the lawsuit says an officer confronted Fannen and said that ticket quotas are illegal.

According to the lawsuit, that officer later resigned after receiving “disparate treatment” from the chief.

Then, state attorneys say, the intimidation began.

According to the suit, the chief or one of his direct reports went to the county prosecutor to discuss pursuing a felony charge against the former officer for an unrelated issue.

The lawsuit also accuses Fannen of asking an employee to tell the resigned officer that if the latter blew the whistle to the attorney general’s office, the chief would pursue a felony charge on an unrelated issue.