Seventy-Seven-Precincts

We investigate whether the New York City Police Department (NYPD) uses productivity targets or quotas to manage officers in contravention of New York State Law. The analysis is presented in three parts. First, we introduce the NYPD's employee evaluation system, and summarize the criticism that it constitutes a quota. Second, we describe a publically available dataset of traffic tickets issued by NYPD officers in 2014 and 2015. Finally, we propose a generative model to describe how officers write traffic tickets. The fitted model is consistent with the criticism that police officers substantially alter their ticket writing to coincide with departmental targets. We conclude by discussing the implications of these findings and offer directions for further research.