Ex-trooper claims Highway Patrol had quotas for tickets

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Former trooper Edward McAbee, 38, said his opposition to the "ticket quota system" led to him being forced out of the patrol.

McAbee is seeking $1 million in damages.

Department of Public Safety spokesman Sid Gaulden said the Highway Patrol doesn't have a quota system. The patrol is a division of DPS.

McAbee, now an officer with the Clemson University Police Department, was fired from the patrol in March 2002 on an allegation that turned out baseless, the lawsuit says. He won his job back through a grievance process.

But in August 2002, McAbee resigned from the patrol because he was given inadequate equipment that "endangered his physical safety," the lawsuit says.

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

"Troopers who wrote greater numbers of tickets were rewarded with promotions and other benefits," said the lawsuit, filed Friday. "Troopers who were perceived to write an insufficient number of tickets were treated with indifference, disdain or outright contempt."

The Highway Patrol has 855 troopers, who wrote 517,579 tickets in 2002, said Gaulden, adding that the data on how much money those tickets generated wasn't readily available.

Local governments receive most money generated from tickets, Gaulden said.

South Carolina doesn't have a law that prohibits a ticket quota, Gaulden said. But in North Carolina, state law prohibits the Highway Patrol there 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 troopers who failed to write tickets over a period of time would open up their job performance to question.

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.

On Labor Day weekend in 2001, 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 South Carolina 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 association has more than 1,000 members and affiliates, including troopers, retired troopers and spouses. McAbee won the presidency and repeated his objections to the quota system.

Named as defendants in the lawsuit are Highway Patrol officers, DPS and its director, Boykin Rose. The suit was filed in U.S. District Court in Columbia. No trial date has been set.