Does the New York City Police Department rely on quotas?

This submission investigates whether the New York City Police Department (NYPD) uses productivity targets or quotas to manage officers in contravention of New York State Law. The analysis is presented in three parts. First, the NYPD's employee evaluation system is introduced, and the criticism that it constitutes a quota is summarized. Secondly, a publicly available dataset of traffic tickets issued by NYPD officers in 2014 and 2015 is described. Finally, a generative model to describe how officers write traffic tickets is proposed. The fitted model is consistent with the criticism that police officers substantially alter their ticket writing to coincide with departmental targets. The submission concludes by discussing the implication of these findings and offering directions for further research.