Greene County deputy mentions traffic stop 'quota' in court; sheriff says no such policy

Giacomo Bologna | Springfield News-Leader

Show Caption Hide Caption Greene County deputy discusses quota for traffic stops in court hearing A Greene County sheriff's deputy talks about traffic stops as part of a grant while testifying in court.

Editor’s note: A previous version of this article misstated the charge facing Kylie Robbins. She was charged with driving a motor vehicle with excessive blood alcohol content, not DWI.

On the stand in a Greene County courtroom last month, a sheriff's deputy revealed that he pulled over a Springfield woman in 2017 to meet his "quota."

The deputy testified that deputies working traffic shifts are supposed to pull over three vehicles every hour as part of a grant.

The News-Leader obtained audio of the court hearing, during which a defense attorney asks a deputy about a car stop on July 10, 2017.

"Was that part of your quota?" the defense attorney asked.

"My quota? Yeah," the deputy replied.

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Later in the hearing, the defense attorney asked: “Was this one of your required stops per the traffic grant quota?"

“Yes,” the deputy responded.

Greene County Sheriff Jim Arnott said his department has no quota system in place, though some grants require three "contacts" per hour.

A contact does not mean a ticket or a warning, Arnott said, just an interaction with a citizen.

"That's not a quota ... That's in most grants," Arnott said. "They don't want to pay you time-and-a-half to sit at headquarters."

Requiring or suggesting that law enforcement officers have a "quota" for issuing traffic citations — known in Missouri law as "misconduct in administration of justice" — is a class A misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in jail.

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There is no state law against requiring officers to have a set number of "contacts" with the public.

Arnott said he would need to read the court transcript to speak about the "quota" referenced by Deputy Austin Adams, but he emphasized that there is no such quota policy for traffic stops.

"If that was stated, it's not correct," Arnott said.

Springfield attorney Tom Carver said the exact wording isn't important. What is important, Carver said, is whether a sheriff's office policy is leading deputies to pull over people without probable cause.

"They can call it 'contacts' or 'issuing citations' or whatever they want," Carver said. "But that is in conflict with their duty not to stop people without probable cause."

"The public has the right to be free of arbitrary stops made by law enforcement which are based on a pretext of meeting grant requirements," Carver said. "If that's being sabotaged by some grant program, that's wrong."

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The sheriff's office does have a grant from the Missouri Department of Transportation to pay for overtime, high-visibility law enforcement activities, MoDOT officials say.

Jon Nelson, assistant to the state highway safety and traffic engineer, said MoDOT has similar contracts with agencies statewide.

"We encourage three contacts per hour when conducting these enforcement projects," Nelson said. "There is no contractual obligation to issue 'X' number of tickets."

According to Nelson, MoDOT collects statistics from participating agencies, but there are no repercussions if officers are conducting less than three contacts per hour.

"We don't have a quota," Nelson said.

The News-Leader has filed a records request with the sheriff's office to learn more about the traffic grant program described in court on June 18 by Adams.

Arnott posted a statement to the Greene County Sheriff's Facebook page after the original publication of this article.

"The accusation that sheriff’s deputies are unlawfully stopping vehicles, without probable cause is unsubstantiated and fabricated and yet another instance of biased and misleading reporting by the News Leader," Arnott wrote.

He noted that most traffic stops conducted by deputies don't result in tickets. Instead, Arnott said stops are used to educate drivers and save lives.

"In 2017 deputies conducted 19,064 traffic stops," Arnott wrote. "Of those, only 2,165 resulted in a written citation. There were 16,160 warnings. To be clear, less than 12% of these stops resulted in a citation."

More about the traffic stop

The revelation of a "quota" program was part of a hearing in the DWI case of 28-year-old Kylie Jordan Robbins.

Robbins was driving a red Mazda sedan in Springfield at about 1:30 a.m. on July 10, 2017, when Adams pulled her over for not having a front license plate, court documents say.

Robbins pulled into the parking lot of a Taco Bell on West Sunshine Street, documents say.

Adams allegedly asked her to exit the car after smelling an odor of intoxicants coming from the car.

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Robbins failed a field sobriety test, court documents say, and was arrested.

While at the jail, Robbins had a blood alcohol content of 0.125, which is over the 0.08 limit to legally drive, documents say.

She was later charged with driving a motor vehicle with excessive blood alcohol content.

Her attorney, however, said Adams had no legal reason to stop Robbins — and that all the evidence about the DWI should be subsequently tossed out.

The defense attorney, C. Ryan Cole, filed a motion to suppress that evidence.

At a June 18 hearing, Cole said Robbins did have a front license plate.

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The license plate was on her dashboard, not her front bumper, Cole said, and that's perfectly legal.

Missouri law does not require the front license plate go on a car's front bumper, Cole said.

Adams testified that when he initially pulled over Robbins, she handed him her license plate.

When Cole asked if Robbins had grabbed the plate from her dashboard, Adams said he didn't recall.

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Cole again asked later in the hearing if Robbins pulled the license plate from her dashboard.

“If that’s where she pulled it from, yes,” Adams replied.

Two days after the hearing, Judge Mark Powell sustained the motion to suppress the evidence.

Attorneys take notice of 'quota' reference

The statement by Adams that deputies are required to conduct three traffic stops an hour appeared to be inadvertent.

Earlier in the hearing, he was questioned by the prosecuting attorney.

The prosecutor asked him to explain what it meant to work "traffic."

"Just make traffic stops on people," Adams said. "It's actually a grant. So, it's three stops an hour. Anything from DWI to, you know, just speed."

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Court records show the Greene County Prosecutor's Office has since requested a transcript of the June 18 hearing.

Scott Pierson, a defense attorney, was in the courtroom at the time of the hearing.

He was taken aback when he heard Adams discuss a quota system for traffic stops — something criminal defense attorneys have suspected for years, Pierson said.

“The Greene County Sheriff’s Office, in particular, has been more likely to arrest an individual based upon what I would considerable questionable facts,” Pierson said.

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Pierson said the deputy's testimony was significant because it "calls into question every single stop."

Is a driver being pulled over because an officer sees a violation, Pierson asked, or because the officer needs to meet a quota?

“It’s not what we want police out there doing,” Pierson said. “We don’t want them trying to find reasons to pull people over — creating reasons.”

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The News-Leader has previously reported on Adams, who testified that he has been a deputy since February 2016.

In September 2016, he performed CPR on a man who suffered a serious head injury.

The injured man had been trying to stop another man from stealing his truck when the vehicle lurched forward, throwing the owner from the truck.

Adams, as well as another deputy and a firefighter, were credited with saving the man's life.