The obvious flaw in this system is that the most easily countable items may not be the best indicators of an officer's effectiveness and they may not provide the greatest benefit to the community. Yet, the end product often fails to meet the test of the market, the community of consumers. Communities and neighborhoods are complex social structures. An evaluation system that relies on simplistic assessments, such as tickets issued and arrests made, may measure what requires a fraction of the officer's time and have little to do with what is actually required to do a good job. Such a system also risks promoting abuses.
Officers can feel pressured to fulfill arbitrary quotas , if they are to earn raises and promotions.
The job becomes distorted to fulfill the expectations of supervision rather than the wants and needs of the community. The critical issue is how can police performance standards and productivity measures be structured to relate to actual job functions to realistic measures of expected job performance. The police role must be defined to serve as a foundation for effective evaluation. The role of the officer must be defined keeping in mind that the approach differs from department to department, and some departments use only traditional approaches while others are involved in newer activities like community policing. Traditional vs. Community Policing Traditional police departments have long defined their primary mission, and therefore their overall effectiveness, in terms of crime fighting.