The S.C. Highway Patrol operated a quota system that rewarded troopers who met ticket-writing goals and punished those who did not, a two-time Trooper of the Year contends in a federal lawsuit.

"Troopers who wrote greater numbers of tickets were rewarded with promotions and other benefits," says the lawsuit, filed Friday for former Trooper Edward McAbee, 38.

"Troopers who were perceived to write an insufficient number of tickets were treated with indifference, disdain or outright contempt," the lawsuit says.

McAbee, now an officer with the Clemson University Police Department, said his opposition to the "ticket quota system" led to his being forced out of the Highway Patrol.

Named as defendants in the lawsuit were Highway Patrol officers, the Department of Public Safety, and the department's director, Boykin Rose. The suit was filed in U.S. District Court in Columbia.

"We haven't seen the lawsuit yet, and if we had, we wouldn't comment," said Public Safety spokesman Sid Gaulden.

The suit, if it comes to trial, could offer a rare, behind-the-scenes view of the inner workings of the Highway Patrol. Officers don't normally make public their concerns over patrol policies.

Gaulden said the 855-trooper Highway Patrol, which wrote 517,579 tickets in 2002, has no quota system.

Gaulden said data on how much money those tickets generated wasn't readily available. However, local governments -- not the Highway Patrol -- receive most money generated from tickets, Gaulden said.

Dennis Bolt, the lawyer who filed the lawsuit for McAbee, said quotas are unfair to the driving public.

"What happens if the shift is almost over, and the trooper needs to write a few more tickets? What happens to his good faith and objectivity when he's under that kind of pressure?" Bolt asked.

The suit says troopers were expected to issue a certain minimum number of tickets, but the suit didn't specify what that minimum was.

In neighboring North Carolina, state law prohibits the N.C. Highway Patrol from having ticket quotas.

"We don't want our officers to be writing tickets they wouldn't normally write," said N.C. Highway Patrol spokesman 1st Sgt. Everett Clendenin.

However, Clendenin said N.C. troopers who failed to write tickets over a period of time would open up their job performance to question.

South Carolina has no law prohibiting a ticket quota, Gaulden said.

'CATCH UP AND MEET HIS QUOTA'

According to his lawsuit, McAbee began working for the Highway Patrol in 1990 and was named Trooper of the Year in two counties.

During 12 years on the patrol, he developed "reservations about the ticket quota system," according to his suit. During the Labor Day weekend in 2001, those reservations "crystallized."

That weekend, McAbee spent his shift investigating a hit-and-run in Pickens County, preventing him "from attending to routine traffic patrol," the suit says.

At the end of his shift, a superior berated him and told him he must write 18 tickets "on the next day in order to catch up and meet his quota," the suit says.

Later in 2001, McAbee ran for president of the S.C. Troopers Association, campaigning in part on a platform that said he was "personally and morally opposed to the ticket quota system. ... This became a point of controversy and an issue in the campaign," the suit says.

The S.C. Troopers Association has more than 1,000 members and affiliates, including troopers, retired troopers and spouses.

McAbee won the Troopers Association presidency and repeated his objections to the quota system.

In March 2002, McAbee was fired from the patrol on an allegation that turned out to baseless, the suit says.

McAbee protested his discharge and won his patrol job back through a grievance process, the suit says. But, in August 2002, he resigned from the patrol because superiors gave him substandard equipment "which endangered his physical safety" and made his existence "miserable," the suit says.

Ralph Mobley, a former colonel with the Highway Patrol who is now a captain with the Richland County Sheriff's Department, said he had considered McAbee an excellent trooper.

"He's an honest, forthright person with deep religious beliefs," Mobley said, declining to comment on the allegations in the suit.

FAILURE TO TICKET LEADS TO 'LAWLESSNESS'

Tom Crosby, spokesman for AAA Carolinas, said quotas "for the sake of quotas are bad.

"But if you are saying, 'Stop people when you see them breaking the law,' that is good."

It's important for troopers in South Carolina -- which suffers from a shortage of troopers and a high rate of traffic fatalities -- to be visible in writing tickets, Crosby said. "A lack of strict enforcement leads to a sense of traffic lawlessness."

But, in his letter of resignation last year to the Highway Patrol, McAbee said the quota policy takes time away from patrolling.

"Troopers do not have time to look for serious violations that can truly save lives," he wrote.

No trial date has been set for McAbee's suit, which seeks $1 million in damages for allegedly violating his freedom of speech.