Lawmakers advance ban on traffic stop quotas by Iowa law enforcement

DES MOINES — State and local law enforcement agencies would be prohibited from instituting quotas for traffic stops by peace officers under legislation being advanced in the Iowa House.

Current law prohibits communities and law enforcement agencies from imposing a quota on the number of citations issued by officers. House File 2010 specifies that the law also would apply to imposing a requirement on the number of times officers stop vehicles for alleged traffic violations, regardless of whether a citation is issued.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa and Iowa Association for Justice, which represents Iowa’s trial lawyers, were registered in favor of the bill.

Kellie Paschke, a lobbyist representing the Iowa Peace Officers Association, said the organization was registered undecided but generally supportive of the bill.

“We fully support officer discretion, and any type of quota that requires us to pull over a certain number of people or issue a certain number of tickets, which is already prohibited in Iowa, brings us concern about true enforcement responsibilities,” Paschke told lawmakers. “We like to pull over people who are actually breaking the law and not getting to certain number of responses or interactions.”

A three-member subcommittee voted unanimously to advance the bill to the full House Public Safety Committee.

“We shouldn’t have quotas,” said Rep. Ako Abdul-Samad, D-Des Moines. “I think it puts an undue burden on police officers, and it also causes individuals to make some different choices depending on different ethnic groups.“

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Formal and informal quota systems by law enforcement agencies in other parts of the country have been shown over time to damage civilians' trust in law enforcement and have also been connected to racially biased enforcement.

Civil rights and racial justice advocates argue a quota may be an implied prod for police officers to increase their activity, and can be a prelude to ensnarement by individuals of minority groups in the legal system or the beginning of a fatal police interaction.

The bill states local governments and state agencies “shall not order, mandate, require, or in any other manner, directly or indirectly, suggest to a peace officer” that they “stop a certain number of persons committing an alleged traffic violation or issue a certain number of traffic citations, police citations, memorandums of traffic violations, or memorandums of faulty equipment on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly basis.”

“It’s a good clarification for existing law,” said Rep. Bill Gustoff, R-Des Moines.

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