16 May 2014 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Chief Tom Weitzel

tweitzel@riverside.il.us 708.447.2127

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Riverside Police Chief Vehemently Opposes Senate Bill 3411
Riverside Police Chief Thomas Weitzel calls proposed legislation, simply ridiculous
Riverside Police Chief Thomas Weitzel came out today publicly opposing Illinois Senate
Bill 3411. Senate Bill 3411 would outlaw what its proponents have called no ticket quotas.
Simply put, the proposed legislation does not want to allow police agencies and the
executives of those agencies to evaluate in any front first-line officers and first-line
supervisors for their performance in traffic enforcement.
Riverside Police Chief Thomas Weitzel stated, This bill is simply ridiculous and literally takes
away Chiefs abilities to evaluate their employees partly based on traffic enforcement.
Proponents of this bill used the word quotas, when actually what we are talking about is
performance standards. If this bill becomes law, police chiefs throughout the state of Illinois
will not be able to evaluate the performance of their officers in any form based on traffic
enforcement. I cannot imagine such a bill would pass.
Chief Weitzel commented, This is not a quota system. This is taking away performance
measures from the chiefs. While there has been some negotiation over allowing agencies to
measure traffic enforcement data when it comes to grant-funded traffic enforcement details,
it does not take into account the everyday 24-hour a day traffic enforcement done by every
single city, village and municipality in the state of Illinois. When you think about it, it is mind
boggling that our elected officials would want to lessen a chiefs ability to evaluate his/her
employees, who by the way, are paid for by tax dollars, and not have any performance
standards based on traffic enforcement.
EWS RELEASE
RIVERSIDE POLICE DEPARTMENT
31 Riverside Road, Riverside, IL 60546
In a day and age where data is becoming essential, this would eliminate data-driven
performance measures that almost every law enforcement agency in the state of Illinois
currently uses. This will without a doubt reduce the effectiveness of local traffic enforcement
programs. Additionally, residents are constantly expressing their concerns to local police
chiefs over increased traffic volume, speed, reckless driving and other traffic concerns so are
we to tell them that we cannot enforce our officers to enforce the traffic laws?
While traffic enforcement is only one of the duties of a law enforcement officer in many
municipalities, it is one of the core functions of the law enforcement officers daily routine. If
the chiefs cannot hold their officers to certain minimum expectations, how do we expect our
residents to hold the officers to expectations involving neighborhood traffic enforcement?
Senate Bill 3411 has passed the Senate by a vote of 57 to 1 and now sits in the House.
The Illinois Association of Chiefs of Police is opposing this legislation as is several other
state-wide law enforcement executive organizations.

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