EAST ORANGE — "Creative writing," is how one East Orange police lieutenant described a typical day on the job. In order to tally a high number of tickets he might break up a fight just over the Newark border and report it occurred in East Orange, issue jaywalking tickets or cite a parent who has double-parked outside an elementary school to run in to pick up her child.

Anything to fill what he describes as his ticket quota.

"They’re telling us you’re not stopping enough people and that’s not nearly enough tickets," said Elaine Settle, an officer with East Orange for 28 years. "It’s getting to the point where you feel like if someone’s walking down the street, minding their own business, they want you to engage them."

Seven members of the East Orange Police Department said during in-person interviews that in the past two years, and most aggressively in recent months, the chief has instituted a quota system, demanding more summonses, arrests, pedestrian and motorist stops with little justification. The Star-Ledger also received 30 additional calls from officers identifying themselves as East Orange police who did not want their names published. They say the threat of disciplinary action to those who don’t fall in line has created a culture of tension and frustrated compliance.

Determining whether East Orange is using quotas in an attempt to bring in more income or simply uses data to promote proactive policing in a high-crime city is a gray area confronting departments nationwide. In Camden, the police union recently filed a suit against the city alleging unfair punishment for refusing to meet quota. The trial in New York over controversial stop-and-frisk policies also has centered on the issue of police quotas.

An East Orange police officer writes a ticket for parking in a bus stop along Rhode Island Avenue

Chief William Robinson, a 30-year-veteran with the department who became chief in 2011, said he does not set or encourage quotas and says officers are misinterpreting his push for aggressive policing. He says the complaints come from a faction of malcontents who "don’t want to work eight hours for eight hours pay."

"It’s not a quota — it’s a responsibility of the officers to do their jobs," said Robinson in an interview at police headquarters earlier this month. "If there’s a quota where is it? What’s the quota here? There’s not one person that told you a number because we don’t have one."

BY THE NUMBERS

The Star-Ledger received three calls from officers defending the chief and saying they felt the complaints were unwarranted.

Quotas, outlawed in New Jersey in 2000 by the Legislature, have been recognized as arbitrary and unfair both to the people arrested or ticketed and also to the officers forced to work in the competitive environment quotas create. Police departments can use information and statistics to measure productivity, but they can’t use those numbers as the sole reason to demote or promote someone, according to New Jersey statutes.

Attorney Gregg Zeff represents the police union in the Camden case that is still awaiting a court date and said quotas are often difficult to prove because they may hide under the radar. "Nobody’s going to call it a quota, quotas are illegal. Everybody knows quotas are illegal, and it’s rare there are exact numbers given out," Zeff said. "Most often everything is done verbally, ‘You need to bring back more, or else.’ "

But Raymond Hayducka, president of the New Jersey

Association of Police Chiefs, said the East Orange case appears to be an issue of misinterpretation of the law. "There's a misconception that you can't mandate officers to write tickets. It's not true," said Hayducka, who wrote an article on quotas for the association in 2009.

"It’s in their job description. The chief is well within his right to look at the numbers and tell officers where to adjust; he just can’t give them a set number."

Robinson laid out a series of highlighted charts and ticket statistics in a conference room earlier this month. The computer statistics-based management system Comstate is used in most police departments, he said. It’s also largely responsible for helping the department lower the crime rate 79 percent over the past decade, Robinson said.

A look at monthly summonses, he said, shows there’s nothing outlandish about East Orange’s policies.

Municipal court filings show that over the most recent eight-month period, East Orange recorded 40,417 traffic summonses and 48,200 total summonses (which include more serious crimes and indictable offenses).

The number is higher than towns of similar population like Gloucester Township (29,745 total) and Old Bridge (12,046 total.) But comparing any two towns is not an exact science, and Bayonne with a population just slightly smaller than East Orange registered 53,926 summonses, according to N.J. court statistics.

The officers interviewed said there’s no "magic number" but say they’re inundated with text messages, radio warnings, progress reports and verbal demands to increase motor vehicle and suspicious person stops. They say they have been subjected to the humiliation of public reprimands and threats of relocation to a retraining unit.

One officer said she was under investigation for "neglect of duty" for a minor infraction and believes it was punishment for not issuing enough citations.

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"I wake up most mornings dreading going to work," said Lt. Shena Grimes, a 20-year-veteran who sent a letter to the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office about the alleged quotas. Grimes is also filing a lawsuit against the department for what she called an unfair sick time suspension.

A memo provided to The Star-Ledger advises one East Orange officer to add one to two investigative stops per day and five to six motor vehicle stops per day to fall in line with the averages of other officers in his zone

"It's running the line of

quasi-legal," said Wolodymyr P. Tyshchenko, an attorney who frequently represents East Orange police officers and looked at the language in the memos. "It's saying the issue is, if you don't keep 'average daily proactive efforts' to a 'respectable level' they're going to discipline you for neglect of duty, which sounds a lot like a quota system to me."

MINOR VIOLATIONS

The chief acknowledges he’s pushing for more summonses but says it’s because crimes are going under-reported. Last month, for example, the department had 81 motor vehicle accidents, he said. Thirty-seven ended in verbal warnings even in cases where laws such as driving with a cell phone or failure to yield caused the accidents, Robinson said. He pointed to 11 pedestrian accidents in February as need for more jaywalking tickets.

Officers have interpreted the chief’s push to issue summonses as eliminating their right to use discretion and issue warnings instead.

Mike Williams double parked his SUV on Walnut Street last week, put on his flashers and ran in to his brother’s apartment. He came out a minute later and found an East Orange police officer sitting in her car behind him. "Come get your ticket" she said over the megaphone, piquing the interest of a few passers-by on the otherwise quiet Thursday morning.

"This is number four — on this block this month," Williams said, "I was double parked for a minute."

Pedestrians also report frequent foot stops. Dwayne

Bullock, 51, said he was stopped on an afternoon walk twice in one week for no discernible reason. "I'm happy to see them out and about, but they ask for my name, date of birth and social. If I'm not doing anything wrong why do you need all that?"

Officers say they use the data to complete suspicious persons stops. The more they tally the more proactive the department looks, they say.

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