In a June 30, 2011 roll call recording for overtime Serrano says he was "forced" into due to his failure to meet quotas, Lieutenant Barrett says she is "looking for five," which Serrano explained meant five criminal summonses. She told officers, who were serving “impact” overtime that targets high-crime areas, to focus on a park in the 40th precinct. "St. Mary's Park, go crazy in there. Go crazy in there. I don't care if everybody writes everything in there. That's not a problem,” she said.

In a recording one month later, Serrano captured Lieutenant Doute of the 40th Precinct demanding "five, five, and five" for each officer on the shift. Serrano explained that the numbers are quotas for five C summonses, five vertical patrols through buildings, and five 250s (stops).

"There's a lot of pressure on the sergeant to make sure that you get your activity," said Serrano, who stressed that orders are coming from the top of the city. Lieutenants and sergeants, "They have performance goals also. So they are under high pressure to make us [meet quotas]."

Serrano said that high C-summons activity appeases higher-ups who want to see that high-crime areas are being policed. "If there is a crime spike concern area, they want the C summonses to reflect the crime spike so they can say…that we addressed the condition.”

C summonses, or criminal misdemeanor summonses, require the person ticketed to appear in criminal court, a task that can often take a whole day, while the process itself can take months. Kids given C-summonses must miss a day of school to appear in court, and their parents are often left to foot the bill. Should they miss a court date and be stopped, a warrant for their arrest will appear, and they will be taken away handcuffed for failure to pay a now more expensive ticket they may not have deserved in the first place. In areas where summonses are a frequent occurrence, finding a sitter to watch children while you spend a day in court, or falling behind on bills to pay a summons, is a regular part of life.

"Addressing conditions" was a term regularly used in the trial, both by whistleblowers and witnesses who defended quotas they described as easily achievable “goals.” Should there be a high volume of robberies in an area, for example, supervisors want to see officers ticketing people in the area. The strategy is part of the "Broken Windows" theory of policing, which maintains that low-level busts and tickets for street crimes will deter more serious offenses. Its efficacy has been hotly debated, and refuted by academics who point to a variety of other factors that decreased crime when the NYPD began implementing the policy in the 1990s.

Pedro Serrano also testified that supervisors prefer certain summonses over others, noting that his bosses demand "hazardous" summonses that come with a fine rather than "correctable" summonses that allow the person to fix, for example, a busted headlight before they must pay a fine. In one recording, a lieutenant tells Serrano he is not making the correct summonses. The correct B summonses "are the ones that the city can make money on," Serrano explained, not the ones "You'll be able to correct it without financially coming out your pocket."

Since Mayor Michael Bloomberg took office in 2002, the number of police stops has increased 600%, to well over half a million stops annually in recent years. Residents of low-income, black and Latino neighborhoods complain that they are stopped almost daily, and that the consequences of being targeted by police are severe interruptions to their lives.

Both Polanco and Serrano claimed supervisors retaliated against them for not meeting quotas, and again after blowing the whistle about their unlawful behavior. Serrano says that after he filed complaints about the NYPD's quotas and punishments for failing to meet them, his locker was shaken and stickered with rats. Other punishments for failing to meet quotas include low evaluations, denial of vacation days, separation from partners, and undesirable assignments like forced overtime shifts with additional quotas. One particularly disturbing punishment was to "drive the sergeant" or supervisor, which required the officer whose numbers were low to drive around with a higher-up until he or she found people for the patrol officer to stop, summons, or arrest, often for crimes the officers said they never observed.

The Human Impact

Plaintiffs in the suit testified that unwarranted police stops are embarrassing, degrading experiences that harm police relations with the community.

Community activist and Harlem resident Nicholas Peart, 24, testified that in April 2011, while he went to the deli to get milk, he was stopped, searched and temporarily detained by police officers. Peart has been the primary caretaker for his three siblings, one of whom is disabled, since his mother's death a year ago.

He described to the court his sense of unease while one officer walked toward his home with his keys, “mixed in with being handcuffed for the first time, and in the back of a police car for the first time.”

“I have kids in the house. I have kids in the house and there wasn't anybody there,” he said, explaining that he feared the police might enter his home.

During a separate August 2007 stop on 96th and Broadway, when he and friends were ordered to get on the ground by officers who drew their guns, Peart testified that he felt embarrassed and marginalized. “They patted over my basketball shorts and I was touched,” Peart said, breaking down in tears. In neighborhoods across the city, young people have complained that stop-and-frisks often become so invasive they involve an officer’s hand on the suspect’s genitals.

Peart testified, “I felt criminalized. My cousins, they had been visiting me from the suburbs in the Poconos, and they had never been through anything like that."

David Floyd, a plaintiff in the case, testified that in February 2008 he was stopped at his own building after retrieving a set of keys he was fumbling with to help a neighbor enter the building.

"Before we could go in, we were stopped…It was again the humiliation," Floyd said, adding that, this time, "it wasn't down the block, it wasn't in another neighborhood. It was on the property that I lived on."

"I felt that I was being told I shouldn't leave my home," he said, "I'm not a criminal."

Polanco testified that the issue with forcing illegal stops for quotas is targeting the wrong people. “I have no problem harassing criminals. I have no problem harassing those that are committing the crime or about to commit the crime,” he said.

“My understanding is that when somebody commits a crime, you don't bring the whole family to court. So why should we hold the whole culture accountable for what some of them are doing?” Polanco said.

Serrano echoed his sentiments, breaking down when he told the judge he was testifying, in part, on behalf of his children. It was an emotional moment that spoke to the severe psychological effect quotas can have on police officers, and also on the community being policed. Serrano told the court, “I don't need my kid to get shot by a cop who was chasing him to fill out a 250.”