Cops fired in Collegedale traffic quota scandal

Collegedale police have a bad reputation in the Chattanooga area for imposing Tenn. Code. Ann. § Title 55, motor and other vehicles, upon people using the roads who are not commercial operators. (Photo Collegedale police department on FB)
Officers of the Collegedale, Tenn., police department stand heavily armed and proud before the corporate seal of their municipal corporation. (Photo Collegedale PD on FB)

Most people reading this article know what it is like to have the blue and red lights pop up in your rear view mirror.

The last thing going through your mind at this point is the feeling of “being protected.” This feeling comes from the fact that the overwhelming majority of the time a driver sees police lights in their mirror is because they have been targeted for revenue collection—often the result of a quota system—and they are about to be given a ticket, or worse.

By Matt Agorist / The Free Thought Project

Police, we are told, are here to keep us safe and protect us from the bad guys. However, public safety all too often takes a back seat to revenue collection. Time and time again, the Free Thought Project has exposed quota schemes in which officers were punished for not writing enough tickets.

The most recent ticket writing scheme to be exposed comes of out Collegedale, Tenn., in which multiple police officers claim they were fired for attempting to call out the illegal orders handed down to them to make arrests and write tickets. Former Collegedale police officers Robert Bedell, Kolby Duckett, and David Schilling have filed lawsuits against the city and its officials for wrongful termination after speaking out against what they refer to as an “illegal quota system.”

“Due to the allegations of a quota system being implemented by members of police department administration either written or unwritten, stated or implied, I feel it is necessary for a formal investigation to [sic] be conducted,” read a statement from City Commissioner Ethan White in July when Bedell announced his lawsuit. “Today, I have reached out to District Attorney General Neal Pinkston requesting that he immediately request the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation to conduct a full investigation into the Collegedale Police Department’s operating policies.”

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