So If The People Actually Writing The Summonses Think Of Them As “Quotas,” Then That’s What They Are, Right?

Some police officers are pushing back at ticket writing performance goals, er, quotas:

Tensions over tickets have reached a boiling point at a Brooklyn precinct where officers are considering a day-long summons boycott.

“We’ve talked about it,” said one police source familiar with the possible slowdown in the 79th Precinct in Bedford-Stuyvesant. “Nobody feels this is right, asking us to write summonses just to meet a quota.”

Investigate A Smoking Gun Too Closely And Your Eyes Will Burn

And you’ll have soot all over your smug mug and probably resemble Wile E. Coyote like after one of those Acme bombs blows up in his face. And you’ll probably cry a little, too. Because nothing institutionalizes a policy like a memo:

The NYPD will launch a probe into memos at a Brooklyn stationhouse that appeared to set quotas for traffic summonses, Mayor Bloomberg said Monday.

(Don’t not take a look at the copies of the memos at the Daily News link, because they’re awesome.)

Earlier: We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Quotas — We Have Productivity Goals For That!; Abolish The Quota System! Now!; No Ticket Quotas, Eh?; The Urban Speed Trap; It’s Not So Much A Quota As It Is A Make-Work Plan For Its Enforcement Agents; The NYPD Tow Operation Division’s Version Of “Drugs On The Table”; “Productivity Goals” Return.

Most Awesome Cop Ever

It’s sort of like what might happen if Marge Gunderson lived in Bed-Stuy instead of Fargo:

One bullet whizzed past Officer Jones’s head. She fired back, emptying her five-shot revolver. One shot knocked the gun from the man’s two-handed grip, piercing his right middle finger and grazing his left hand, according to the police. Another shot hit the lock on the front door, jamming it.

One shot knocks the gun out of the suspect’s hand, and the other one locks the door . . . that’s like something you see in a movie. Wow . . . and this was the first time she had to use her gun. She was promoted to detective today.

(Ray Kelly owes her more than that for the bad PR day they had.)

And Sometimes The Strategy Goes Horribly Wrong

This is not why you cook books:

Responding to the ongoing Voice series “NYPD Tapes,” Hernandez reveals publicly for the first time that the downgrading of crimes to manipulate statistics allowed a man to commit six sexual assaults in a Washington Heights neighborhood in 2002 before he was finally caught after his seventh attack.

The initial six crimes, committed over a two-month period, went unnoticed by 33rd Precinct detectives, Hernandez says, because patrol supervisors had improperly labeled most of them as misdemeanors. It was only through a lucky break — an alert neighbor spotted the suspect pushing his seventh victim into her apartment — that the rapist, Daryl Thomas, was finally captured.

And You Thought The Coen Brothers’ Quirky Take On Life Was Out Of Touch With Reality

There should be a special charge added to offenses perpetrated by criminals who prey on people without legs:

A homeless man is accused of tying his legless friend to the bed in a Grasmere motel, hiding his prosthetic legs so he couldn’t get up, and stealing his property as he lay bound.

Carl Hughes, 33, committed the bizarre theft in the early morning hours on April 19 in the Cosmopolitan Motel at 1274 Hylan Blvd., police allege.

Hughes’ friend, 43-year-old Joseph Valente, was letting him stay in his room in the motel, according to authorities.

At about 2:10 a.m., Valente awoke to find himself tied at the chest with an electrical cord, police allege.

His prosthetic legs and his wheelchair had been moved away from the bed, a law enforcement source said.

Hughes was walking out of his room with a laptop, a debit card, a cell phone and unspecified medication, court papers allege.

Somehow, Valente managed to get free and contact authorities.

Police tracked Hughes to a park bench in Manhattan on Tuesday, and arrested him in connection with the crime, authorities said.

When an officer told him he was being taken to Staten Island to answer for a robbery, Hughes blurted out, “Oh, the guy with no legs!” the law enforcement source recounted.