When you're driving, the last thing you want to see is flashing lights in the rearview mirror. Alesha Cross saw them last November, when, police say, she failed to make a complete stop. What bothered Cross is that the officer seemed to be on a mission to ticket. I mean, come on now. Issuing tickets is routine for police departments in Marion County.
Officers write up drivers every four minutes, on average.
And after looking at three years worth of ticket data, Eyewitness News made some surprising discoveries. First of all, the busiest ticket writers in Marion County aren't full-time, regular officers. It doesn't matter how many people, as long as you had 20 individual citations for each month. Current and former deputies would talk to us only with their identities concealed. The officers say Deputy Chief Robert Leary strictly enforces the quota.