Lauderdale: Stop with the junk that cops don't have quotas

That's the ticket.

Let's outlaw traffic ticket quotas for police.

A South Carolina legislator wants to do that, and I don't blame him.

State Rep. Justin Bamberg is targeting "predatory policing" policies, something he has learned a lot about as the lawyer for the family of a police shooting victim in North Charleston.

Walter Scott was shot repeatedly in the back when he ran. He'd been stopped for allegedly having a broken third brake light. That ended up costing him life, and Bamberg is right to cry foul.

Police maintain they don't have ticket quotas.

But at the same time, some counties and municipalities count heavily on income from the fines. And the practice of stopping vehicles for nitpicking problems is widespread, as a look into the issue by the Charleston Post and Courier showed.

Still, my first reaction was for Columbia to keep its nose out of local business. The General Assembly is too quick to tell local governments, and school districts, what they must do.

In Beaufort County, the town of Bluffton was for many years a proud member of the Speed Trap Club.

People used to write whiny letters to the editor demanding to know how Bluffton could dare be allowed to fine someone with out-of-state tags for inching over the 30 mph speed limit. They wanted the Hilton Head Island to intervene in this affront to tourism.

To which I thought, "If Bluffton wants you go 30 mph through town, it has every right to make you do so, even if you are a very important Yankee."

I guess we don't have to worry about that these days. US 278 is now the Bluffton Autobahn. And SC 170 between Bluffton and Beaufort has turned into the Okatie 500. If I'm going 60 mph, cars swerve past me as if I were driving a John Deere.

If the legislature wants to control how local tickets are issued, it needs to first get its hands out of the till. South Carolina funds its state courts and Criminal Justice Academy with fees and fines added to the cost of tickets and convictions, according to the SC Judicial Department.

That gives the state an automatic conflict of interest, just like local towns that depend on the fines to make ends meet.

I've paid my dues to society twice in a small town near here, both times for allegedly going 55 mph in a 45 mph zone. Both times, I was so far out of town, the kind officer pulled me to a stop by a cotton field.

In another small Lowcountry town, I got a ticket for going 55 mph in a 35 mph zone. We were out in rolling pastureland where the only other people on the road were looking for UFOs.

So stop with the junk that cops don't have quotas.

The question is what the legislature should do about it.

It should quit counting on tickets for revenue. And it should let the judicial branch sort out the rest.

Follow columnist and senior editor David Lauderdale at twitter.com/ThatsLauderdale and facebook.com/david.lauderdale.16.

This story was originally published January 12, 2016 at 7:30 PM with the headline "Lauderdale: Stop with the junk that cops don't have quotas."