FORT WORTH - West side patrol officers are under new orders: Make two traffic stops a day or face a penalty that includes having days off changed or being reassigned to a different beat, shift or district.

The policy, described in a memo obtained by the Star-Telegram as an active approach to decreasing serious crime in west Fort Worth, disturbs some officers to whom it sounds similar to an illegal quota.

"To me, this is a thinly veiled attempt at a quota, and I don't like it," said Lee Jackson, president of the Fort Worth Police Officers Association, which represents more than 1,200 members of the department.

The state transportation code prohibits ticket quotas.

Police Chief Ralph Mendoza said that he did not initiate the new policy, which he learned about last week, and that he doesn't know who did. But he said he sees nothing wrong with the two-traffic-stop policy. He insisted that it is not an imposed quota.

"Officers have to show their supervisor productivity," Mendoza said. "There's various forms of showing productivity. One of the things we have pushed is going back to the fundamentals of policing. Traffic stops are extremely fundamental."

Mendoza said officers still have the discretion to write a ticket or issue a warning to a driver.

Jackson called the West Division's attempt to regulate the number of traffic stops "misguided." The West Division is a meandering area that stretches from the southern end of Hulen Street in the south to outside Loop 820 in the northwest.

"I understand the need for officer production and the supervisor being able to gauge what the officer does through the course of the day," Jackson said. "But this kind of written policy is very counterproductive."

The memo, labeled a "one-on-one counseling session form" to be used when an officer violates the policy, details that violations will result in "change in roll call time, days off, shift, beat/relief and/or district reassignment."

"If you do not increase your traffic stops, this can only be explained as a neglect of duty on your part," the memo says. "It also indicates you are not working with your team members who are striving to actively reduce ... offenses in the district."

The form, which is to be signed by the employee and supervisor, gives officers a two-week deadline to increase their productivity.

If a noticeable improvement has not been made in two weeks, the officer's roll call time and/or days off will be changed for 90 days, the memo states. If the officer is in compliance with the policy after another evaluation, the memo says, it will be recommended that he or she be returned to original duty status.

Jackson said he would not oppose the policy if it pertained to a single officer who had not written a ticket for an inordinate amount of time. But he said he is against it if it is being used as a new "blanket" policy for all west side officers.

Craig Driskell, an attorney with the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas, said an officer brought the new policy to his attention last week.

"Many officers are not enthusiastic about it," Driskell said, "because they view it as interfering with their discretion, and because many are concerned the public might confuse it with some sort of illegal quota."

Mendoza said that making traffic stops is necessary for safety and that they reduce traffic fatalities by slowing down speeders.

He said such stops also give officers a legal means of finding evidence of crimes, such as narcotics. Fort Worth has conducted "zero-tolerance" traffic stop enforcement in the past to reduce violent crimes, he said.

The police chief said he does not believe requiring two traffic stops per day is excessive.

"As far as I'm concerned, it needs to be as many as they can make," Mendoza said. "I would think two would be a minimum."

Jackson said he believes the requirement may take officers away from other important duties.

"There's so many things that an officer is obligated to do during the course of a day," Jackson said. "To put this kind of a burden [on them], I don't think it's justifiable."

Mendoza acknowledged that there are circumstances in which an officer would not be able to make two traffic stops a day, such as a shift filled with back-to-back calls. He said he believes an officer's supervisor would take those cases into consideration, and he has heard of no grievances filed alleging otherwise.

"Until I see that someone is mishandling it, I have no reason to pull the reins on anyone," Mendoza said.

Driskell said the law enforcement association has not had to represent any officers for failing to make the required two traffic stops. But he and Jackson said they suspect that's because the policy is so new.

"I hope that this policy will be done away with before any action like that occurs," Jackson said. "This is a bad idea. The Police Officers Association is completely against this kind of supervisory tool."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Deanna Boyd, (817) 390-7655 dboyd@star-telegram.com