‘We’re $5,000 behind.’ Missouri town settles with state over traffic ticket quotas

A southwestern Missouri town on Tuesday settled with the state over allegations that some members of the police department had been issuing traffic citations to generate revenue, officials said.

The Missouri Attorney General’s Office says it received a photo earlier this year of a whiteboard in the Diamond Police Department. Written on the board was a message that read, “We R $5,000 B hind issue some tickets RFN,” stating the department was “way behind on highway safety enforcement,” the attorney general’s office said in a news release.

The person who sent the photo — described as being “familiar” with the city’s operations — explained the acronym meant “right [expletive] now,” according to the release.

Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt filed a lawsuit against the City of Diamond in April. In the lawsuit, the state also alleged that Diamond Police Chief Michael Jones kept the mayor informed as to how many tickets his office had given out, KSNF reported.

“Today, one of my most important duties as Attorney General is to enforce all laws of the state of Missouri, including Senate Bill 5, to ensure that Missourians aren’t being treated as ATMs,” Schmitt said in the news release.

The City of Diamond is situated 150 miles south of Kansas City. Home to 925 people, it is best known as the birthplace of agricultural scientist George Washington Carver and plays host to the George Washington Carver National Monument.

The settlement, in which the city admits the police chief encouraged officers to issue a certain number of tickets, requires the Diamond Police Department to comply immediately with Missouri law that prohibits citation quotas of any kind, according to the news release. The city must also develop a training program to educate participants on how to comply with the law.