Do the state police have ticket quotas?

That's a rhetorical question of course. Certainly the brass puts the arm on the troopers to come up with more revenue. It's been noted here before how much the Staties and the Mafia have in common. They both love a good earner, and if you don't bring in a lot of cash, forget-about-it.

The brass, of course, deny, deny, deny.

But you be the judge of this latest state police memo, which comes from Troop D, where the boss is Maj. Wayne L. Mackiewicz.

Troop D - Wayne's World

Wayne's World has had its share of problems lately, so a few months back, they sent a bonehead lieutenant named Bruce Jillson down to Norwell to kick butt and take names. This foul-mouthed Jillson has a habit of putting his "thoughts" on paper, such as the time in 1998 when he scorched some troopers in Brighton for not making enough pinches. The problem, as I noted at the time, is that when a citizen goes unarrested, nobody's making any money off him.

So Lt. Jillson arrives at the Norwell substation, and guess what Johnny One-Note is soon lecturing one of his sergeants about.

"I feel that a complaint citation carries far more deterrent effect than a warning and I would like to see a far greater percentage of complaints, as opposed to warnings."

As one of the troopers puts it: "Sounds like a quota because it is one."

The game plan for the state police is, surcharge motorists back into the Stone Age. What's good for Commerce Insurance is good for the Massachusetts State Police.

The usual call was placed to the state police flack, Capt. Robert Bird. He made his usual comment: a warning is a ticket. Of course it is, but it doesn't cost you any money and it doesn't go onto your permanent record.

Stopping crime costs money. Writing tickets makes money. It's as simple as that. This isn't law enforcement we're talking about, it's the rackets. Tickets are a shakedown.

By the way, if you'd like to read this memo of Jillson's and a couple of others, go to the X-files on my Web site, howiecarr.org. He tried to make sure this quota memo didn't leak out by writing at the top to the sergeant, "For Your Info Only."

Nice try, Lieutenant.

Anyway, Jillson says he wants tickets "especially in obviously fragrant fouls such as a motorist going 85MPH in a posted 60MPH as is appearing on a lot of citations written here."

Fragrant?

Surely he meant to say flagrant.

Said Capt. Bird: "We don't get anything out of a surcharge."

No, but the insurance companies do. Oh sure, they say they don't, but do you think those greedheads really pay their State House lobbyists hundreds of thousands of dollars a year just to break even?

Lt. Jillson can't understand why some troopers can't do the math. So in his large amounts of spare time, he crafted a memo in which he speculated about how wonderful it would be if the brass in Wayne's World could order "transfers for individuals that just don't fit with a particular setting."

People who just don't fit? Who exactly are these people, Lieutenant? "Certain individuals," he writes, "who are constantly deficient in appearance, demeanor, workmanship or whatever."

The "whatever" memo was written on Sept. 13. On rereading it, apparently even a nut like Lt. Jillson realized that its Taliban-like tone might not be appropriate in wartime. He left the draft in his computer, where it was retrieved by one of his underlings. It's posted on my Web site, too.

Anyway, Lt. Jillson has since been basically run out of Norwell. He ended up hurling an obscenity at a sergeant (you can read his memo about that, too). But his legacy lives on in Wayne's World.

"The ticket quota initiated by Lt. Jillson is four per shift, "said the trooper." They call them contacts."

Said Capt. Bird: "It would not be unreasonable to ask troopers to come into 'contact' with the motoring public four times in an eight-hour shift."

It smells to me. Maybe I don't fit, but I think the whole thing is fragrant. As Lt. Jillson would say, whatever.

Howie Carr's radio show can be heard every weekday afternoon on WRKO-AM 680, WHYN-AM 560, WGAN-AM 560, WXTK-95.1 FM or online at howiecarr.org.

(Howie Carr is a columnist for The Boston Herald.)
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