I agree with Roadking

Beach-athough "Roadking" doesn't get your comment, I agree. Running a red light is extremely dangerous. As I said before, go to Pinetree Plaza on a weekend and watch the near misses as the cars run the lights turning in to get to Pier One or Country Buffet. It's scary.

Read the instructions at the bottom of the comments page. It says to stay focused. Where does the article talk about running red lights and comparing it to shooting people? Those people who want more tickets written can donate their paychecks to the city for more deputies. The JPD must be doing a good job of protecting its citizens if all they have to do is complain about speeding.

"I know i am guilty of.. running yellow/red lights so what go live in Florida there are red lights run everytime the light changes." -babsjvl

Are you serious? I don't even know where to start on your statement above. I suggest you read it as if you did not write it, then read it again.

Running a red light is the equivalent of discharging a shotgun in a crowd. You have about the same odds of killing one/many, injuring one/many, or hitting nobody at all. Discharging a shotgun at a crowd is also illegal and dangerous. People have done that in Florida; does that make it ok to do here?

"Maybe the gazette should run a poll on this."-babsjvl

Do you really think we need a Gazette poll to identify the people that care so little about their own lives that they risk the lives of others by running red lights? (rhetorical question, save your time)

Everyone that posts on here is guilty of speeding to so I don't know what the debate is over. There are alot worst crimes than speeding. Pick what you want the Police to do write tickets for speeding or Robbing people (or worst crimes than that). I know i am guilty of speeding and running yellow/red lights so what go live in Florida there are red lights run everytime the light changes. Maybe the gazette should run a poll on this.

There are some really good postings here. The question to ask ourselves is, are we will to spend more in taxes to write ourselves more tickets? Lets face it, like one poster stated, most of us are the problem. I don't think I want my police force to be spending time busting soccer moms trying to get from point A to point B in time. I would rather see them spend the time in school zones, making sure our kids are safe.

HA HA - garyprimer, I agree. Been to Clinton lately? I predict that using this "new technology" that you speak of, they will solve their speeding problems even faster than Janesville. More potholes than pavement. And guess what's under that leftover ice & snow......

The city has a new device for lowering speeds. They are called "potholes" and they attempt to make you reduce your speed by banging your head against the roof of your vehicle until you slow down. I predict that they are going to become very popular over the next few months.

George Carlin, as true today as it was back then.

Have you ever noticed how anyone driving slower than you is an "idiot" and anyone driving faster than you is a "maniac"? Something to think about.

Whatdidyousay and jonwayne89 make great points. I almost never see less than 3 legitimate red light runs between my trip to and from work while traveling up/down Milton Ave. I am certain to see that many, or more, if I decide to deviate from my normal route by going east of 26/14.

This is so much more dangerous than speeding. I do not say that speeding is not dangerous, rather it is less dangerous than rolling the dice in a busy intersection. I know the requirements for a citation to be given for passing through a red light as well as failing to stop/accelerating through a yellow. JPD does a great job with the many tasks they are expected to handle. I know JPD is hard pressed for the resources to devote to traffic for any length of time, but they really should consider unmarked (rental or personal cars) for spotting this. A few hard hitting days of patrol focusing on people that say/think, "I was going to fast to stop; safely" or "I NEED to get through the light otherwise I will have to wait 4 MORE MINUTES!" will make a huge difference. Maybe it will result in more drivers thinking, "if I am going to fast to stop, I am going to fast", "I bet yellow was a warning that red was coming, I better stop", or "if I am going the speed limit (or close to it) and I still run a red, it is a good sign I'm not paying attention to the most important task at hand".

Many years back the good citizens on a particular street brought a petition to the PD signed by almost everyone in a two block range, demanding radar be set up. It was and you guessed it, 4 of the 24 signing the petition we caught speeding and got tickets. To quote the wise comic figure Pogo--We Have Met the Enemy, and He is Us --

Basing the issuance of a speeding ticket on prior speeding tickets, is not a good idea. If this were done religiously, by every cop, no one would ever get their first speeding ticket :)

Actually mcs, I can think of two recently off the top of my head in different departments. As wisconsinheat stated it tends to be more indirect as in making sure they don't get a particular position or special assignment they want.

Personally I saw three cops today along my "route" (West Memorial) that made me check my speed three times running. Normally I go around 40 in a 35, 30 in a 25, and people pass me left and right. The police presence seemed to make a difference - I say hats off.

Stop with the warnings and write the %^#@ ticket! And while they are at it, start busting people for running red lights and blocking oncomming traffic because they shouldn't have to waitthrough another series of lights to make a left turn. Hire some TRAFFIC cops and pay em with ticket proceeds.

Quota's are illegal. Do you really think it would be even hinted that numbers play a part in anything?
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Call it what you want but, INDIRECTLY, numbers play play into it.

mcs: Your points are well taken.
Of course "job performance" is a part of every evaluation. All aspects of the job are subject to "performance" evaluation, not just citations.
I'm not saying that numbers are a big problem, or even a problem at all for that matter, but it does exist. No, there is not an arbitrary number. That is why I called it "indirect."

One more point that there is no quota..just re-read the article "our goal is not to write tickets .It's to make people slow down,to reduce accidents and property damage." 42mph in a 30mph zone..just a warning issued where a citation clearly would have been justified....= NO QUOATA.....official or unofficial.

wisconsin heat......your argument can justify that there is or is not an unofficial quota. My position is that production high or low is a problem. Remember that an officer that has a high number of citations is constantly "out of service" and thereby not readily available for calls for service that could be more hazardous for the public and other officers because the lack of necessary assisttance.This can be viewed as a negative job performance also. Evaluations are based on job performance/production based on specific job actions.If the assignment was handled appropriately and a citation or arrest made when appropriate.. NOT if he met some arbitrary number.

mnm98, your experience is proven. I'll post your comment again so it doesn't disappear in the sea of hogwash.
"THERE IS NO QUOTA!!! How do I know? I worked for JPD for over 10 years before going to Phoenix. I can tell you first hand traffic enforcement IS A PRIORITY in Janesville. Almost everyone takes radar out. But time to do traffic is limited due to calls for service. The officers arebusy with calls of my kid won't listen to me, my neigbor has his trash out early, the neighbors called me a name, etc. If there weren't ridiculous calls for service to answer, maybe more traffic enforcement could be done. Keep up the good work guys. I know what you put up with and you're doing great."

another thing i forgot to add...i can already hear it....if officers wrote every speeder a ticket for everything over the limit it would be, "those jpd officers are a bunch of a holes they cant give anyone a break they gotta write you for every little thing" i can already hear it like i said quit sweating the small stuff and worry about the bigger issues at hand.. i can see if it is a serious speeding offense then yeah but you cant write everyone!!

I should have added that not all departments grade or evaluate on the same level, so the degree would vary among departments.
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But it definitely happens.

"How often ,if ever, have you seen an officer disciplined for low traffic enforcement in a routine duty situation."
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Disciplined? Not overtly. But definitely in the form of poor evaluations due to low citation numbers. Even when other patrol activities accounted for the time.
Numbers are often stressed and OF COURSE it is always approached as "low production" for that very reason.
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Granted, some officers just don't produce in different situations, but the fact remains that citations (and henceforth the numbers) are a big factor in most evaluations of officers assigned to patrol functions, not just those assigned to selective enforcement involving grants.

Stop and think...if they wrote 810 speeding related tickets last year, that only averages out to 2.2 tickets a day!!! I guess the odds of not getting a ticket for speeding in Janesville is pretty good. I couldn't believe the guy going 42 mph in a 30 mph zone didn't get a ticket?? Last I knew it was the drivers' responsibility to know the speed limit on the streets they are driving on.

I know some JVPD officers who work with a grant on Milton Ave. and they write alot of tickets along with warnings too. As in this article you have an officer who said he was going to give a warning if he didnt have any prior speeding tickets. This shows that not all officers just write tickets. Warnings are applied even written warnings can be given out.

seems we could and should get a few more officers on duty. doesnt sound like enough for city of 65k

intheloop.....your not the only one "in the loop". You are absolutely right that some officers are pulled from special assignments because of not issuing enough citations(low production). The special assignment usually means grant money.Grant money usually means a "directed patrol" with specific intentions and goals. If they don't meet or exceed the "grant conditions",yes they will be pulled. Again this is merely the result of low production.There is a world of difference between low production in a grant situation and a quota. How often ,if ever, have you seen an officer disciplined for low traffic enforcement in a routine duty situation.

Clyde, yeah that would work great till they get a call and all of them have to hurry back to the station to get ready to go on the call making the response time 3 times longer. GREAT IDEA!

wisconsinheat is correct, unwritten quotas do exist and they are used for evaluations on officers/deputies/troopers that work patrol functions. There are cases where these people are taken off special assignments because they didn't write enough tickets for a couple of months in a row.

at least some people have a clue on here...thank you mnm98. heres an idea if people would find something better to do then complain about every little thing they can think of cops would have more time for other stuff. there are how many cars on the road in a given day??? its a big town and with only 13 to 16 officers on the road at a time they cant make everyone happy. and by the way this needs to be said....THE SPEED LIMIT ON MILTON AVE NORTH OF POST OFFICE IS 40!!! NOT 25 OR 30

I say have make the firemen (almost as many of them as there are police officers) monitor traffic enforcement until they get a call out.

The "traffic unit" is a really good idea and I bet they'd get a bunch of volunteers for that. But the fact of the matter is: all these people wants more officers out on the street but when it comes to raising the taxes to pay for them, they scream bloody murder.

I see police officer running radar on Mt.Zion yet I also understand "speeding" is not the only thing going on in Janesville. The officers must handle other calls for service. Maybe down the road JVPD will have a "traffic unit" which is soley for traffic enforcement.

About a year a goe i was involved in a acident inm Beloit when a man ran a stop sign ant the Wisconsin an Milwaukee Rd cause the gentelman was on his phone an not paying atention to Traffic around him my truck was a total loss when people drive there toght to pay atention to all traffic signs Stop yeild lights ect if you are on a cell phone your easily distratcted an you dont pay atention to your driving i dont know what the answer is going to be all i know is something needs to be done we get to distracted when we drive drivers just need to be more responible drivers an just pay atention to what is going on around you when you drive

Come on Wisconsinheat you are really stretching for that one. Production is the common theme in 90% of job evaluations,no matter if you're issuing tickets,installing auto. parts at GM,working at Mcdonalds etc. And there are several sworn tech.,support services and investigative jobs that wouldn't know how to write a ticket.How do you suppose they get evaluated.

No, the real problem is people talking on cell phones and not paying attention to others on the road. Just yesterday, I was almost hit 3 times by inattentive drivers and all 3 were women on cell phones!!!

Even though quotas are illegal, they do exist in an indirect way.
Just ask any officer, if, when receiving job performance evaluations, citation numbers ever play into how they are evaluated as to meeting expected standards or not.
And those evaluations are considered during the promotion process.
So, the more tickets, the better the evaluation.
The better the evaluation, the better the chance for promotion.

The worst place in town for running red lights is eastbound 14, the left hand turn into Pinetree Plaza. On the weekends between 2 to 6 cars enter the intersection after the red light every time. Is the laest deal at TJ Maxx worth killing someone over.

Unfortunately for all of us there are a lot of bad drivers on the road, and there always will be. We are blessed to have many great police officers in our communities, and we have to understand that they can't be everywhere at once. If you don't see immediate results when you call and complain it's probably because a call of higher priority requires their attention. What a wonderful world it would be if the worst complaint the police department received was in regards to traffic violations.

The Red light runners , and those who never stop at stop signs are SO much more Dangerous than the "speeders" there is alot of enforcement that needs to be done in this city !! I live on a busy street , I can count all day 1 out of maybe 5 or 6 cars actually stop at the stop sign next to our house
HOW MANY TIMES HAVE YOU SEEN CARS RUN THE RED TURN LIGHT IN FRONT OF MENARDS , KMART AND SHOPKO ALONE !!!!!!

THERE IS NO QUOTA!!! How do I know? I worked for JPD for over 10 years before going to Phoenix. I can tell you first hand traffic enforcement IS A PRIORITY in Janesville. Almost everyone takes radar out. But time to do traffic is limited due to calls for service. The officers arebusy with calls of my kid won't listen to me, my neigbor has his trash out early, the neighbors called me a name, etc. If there weren't ridiculous calls for service to answer, maybe more traffic enforcement could be done. Keep up the good work guys. I know what you put up with and you're doing great.

And what about people who turn right on red without stopping first?

Thank you truck drivers, but try not to go 70 past me on the interstate when we're all going 40 because it's snowy. It's very hard to see and you tend to almost force other cars off the road.

Speeding in Janesville doesn't bother me as much as the number of drivers that don't seem to know what STOP or YIELD means on a posted sign. They seem to just slow down going around or through a regulated intersection, and try to "force" their way in to the road where they are supposed to yield.

You may be able to raise cain, but I don't think you can shake a cain. I know that you can't raise a Caine back up when he's in defeat.

Deweeze...that quote is in reference to grants ,usually State or Federal. They mandate as a condition of the grant to issue so many citations or warnings ,usually per hour. THE LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCYS IS WISC. DO NOT HAVE QUOTAS,State Statute....Bubs your post is correct except school bus violations. In those cases they can cite the owner if the owner doesn't want to provide info. on the driver...One other issue that hasn't been mentioned. As stated there are many posted speed violations,BUT I believe that several streets have posted speeds under rated.

I agree with Seabass. I am a truck driver and trucks are allowed on any roads as long as they have deliveries. Yes, there are posted truck routes, but those are designed for traffic going all the way thru town. I see it all the time....people who get upset when they have to slow down, go around or back up for a truck. I suppose Proartist would complain about a foodservice semi-truck bring lunch food to his child's school, office supplies to his church, or coffee cups to his favorite coffee shop. I used to deliver to the Gazette facility downtown and everytime I would make a delivery, I would have to pull out onto Milwaukee St. to back into the loading dock. And almost evertime I was manuevering downtown, other motorists would become irate. Those motorists would probably be the first to call and complain that their Gazette was delivered late or not at all. To all you who want to complain about trucks taking up too much room or being where they aren't supposed to be, just remember, IF YOU USE IT, TOUCH IT, OR EAT IT, A TRUCK BROUGHT IT. Without trucks, the world stops.

I find that when I obey the speed limits I get passed by pissy drivers and get the bird A LOT.

The sad thing is... this unnecessary display of the middle finger is usually from women with kids in the car!.

Ten contacts a night doesn't always mean stopping people. It could be a stalled out car or anything that you make contact with some person of the community so don't assume that it means stopping people for something stupid just to fill a quota.

thanks buds for the info

To proartist, as a former tuck driver some of corners that truck driver has to make are NOT friendly corners (if you what I mean) they are given no choice to swing wide to make them or make the cars backup, most time cars will pull up past the line.
And as going on roads they are not to go, if they have to make a delivery they can go down them to make it.
And the posted "TRUCK ROUTE MAKED IN YELLOW" signs, they are a joke

Seabass,

That's currently against Wisconsin state statutes. Tickets may only issued to the driver of the car, not the owner. I believe there is a bill in the Assembly to allow the ticket to be issued to the owner who would have to sign an affidavit stating who was driving the vehicle if it was not them. I don't believe the bill is getting any traction though.

Maybe if you put up one of those electronic billboards on every block, people would slow down to read them. You could regulate speeds by controlling the size and amount of text.

Hey deweeze, where did you get your information from I read the same story you did and I didn't see anything about what you posted. I did talk a JPD Officer about this and he informed me that they are required to make up to 10 contacts a night, weather a tick is issued is up to the Officer.

I think that most people drive in traffic by approximating the speed of the car ahead of them. When everyone is speeding, it is hard for police to pick one person and arrest him or her. It is not unfair for police to do this, but it is perceived by to be unfair by people with the teenage "but all of my friends are doing it" mentality. I would feel that it was unfair to me.

What about all the speeding trucks and extra-long semis that are going OFF posted truck routes and never get even a warning! Not only are they ruining roads, destroying curbs having tires up over the curbs when trying to make corners, and causing cars to back up at stop signs for them, but adding additional dangerous situations to residential areas where they shouldn't be in the first place.

If the city would buy cameras and radar guns and mount them on poles then have them tied into a computer system that would be issued by mail. Like Spingfield, Ill. or Chicago, Ill. has on the Interstate system.

The radar gun would clock the speed, the camera would take pitcher of the license plate (if needed as evidence in court)and the computer would mail the ticket

They always say there are no ticket quotas. Hmmmmmmm wonder what they call this?

"“When officers are working grant hours, their sole responsibility is speed enforcement,” Davis said.

And when an officer is doing such enforcement, he or she is obligated to make at least one traffic stop every 45 minutes and write at least three tickets for every warning issued, Davis said."

Sounds like a quota to me.

what bugs my husband is doing the speed limit and having a patrol car speed by you without the flashing lights on. then comming to a stop sign and having the same patrol car sitting there.

dianaw1961 That is officially the silliest idea EVER. I feel better knowing your not one the cities traffic engineers

if the city would just put more stop sign on these streets that are so busy, they might slow down these speeders, to get on to these busy streets you can sit there for at least 5 to 10 minutes its crazy!!!!!!!so what if you have to stop every other street!

I have personally complined to a Sgt at JPD about the speeding problems in my sons school zone for WELL over a year now, she's probably sick of my calls by now. The speeders include SCHOOL BUSSES, a Charter Cable truck, a garbage truck, at least one Police car, and teachers!! I even had people pass me on the left in the oncoming lane, going very fast right next to kids walking to school on the sidewalk. The police won't do anything, the bus company won't do anything. Seems like no one cares except me. Maybe someone from the Gazette should go observe for a few days, it would make a great editorial!!

Speeding is rampant in Janesville. In some places it is absolutely ridiculous that people don't get tickets, myself included. I caught myself going by a Janesville Police Officer he/she was parked on a side street and I was on Mt. Zion going 40 miles per hour. I deserved a ticket, the officer didn't even pull out much less pull me over. Until they start issuing tickets speeding won't stop. Milton Avenue, Milwaukee, Court, Memorial, Mt. Zion, and Wright Road are all good speeding areas. I know people are going 50 or faster on these roads when they're flying past me going 40.