This story makes the Wells Fargo fake-account-creating employees look angelic. Two Hialeah, Florida police officers have been charged with alleged professional misconduct for issuing dozens of bogus tickets to drivers they never pulled over and ticketed. Cuts way back on the time required to meet your quota of tickets if you can just make stuff up.
Perhaps the most-jaw-dropping part of the story is how the fake tickets were discovered. Florida has no shortage of lawyers. One type of lawyer is the traffic ticket specialist. These specialists do their marketing. “No pagues ese ticket!” and “Don’t Pay That Ticket!” The lawyers send out cards and mailers to drivers (and they find them on public records) who have been issued tickets. These lawyers are also on TV and billboards. Their marketing efforts brought clients clambering to their doors. However, many of those clients swore that they had never been pulled over but they did remember passing two motorcycle police officers.
The clever lawyers took what they were finding to the city police department. Enter internal affairs. Following their investigation, the department concluded that the two officers simply wrote down license numbers and made-up names with the tickets going to the address for the vehicle license. One made-up name was “Martcello Strovanov.” Sounds like a chicken dish. One driver had six tickets issued on the same day by these same officers.
If the Barometer had to guess, she would say that the officers were trying to meet goals or quotas for tickets issued. Be careful what you measure. Be careful about goals and incentives. Employees will reach their numbers, but, just like the Wells Fargo accounts, what they are using to meet the goals and get their incentives might not be real.