Pressured to write tickets | Former officers speak out

POULAN, Ga. (Atlanta News First) - Two former South Georgia police officers claim they were pressured to write traffic citations to generate revenue to bolster their city’s budgets.

John Masters and Zack Watson, who worked for the Poulan, Georgia, police department about two years ago, said they felt compelled to speak out after Atlanta News First Investigates published a series of investigations the past year which uncovered multiple South Georgia cities relying on significant portions of their municipal budgets from fines and forfeitures, generated by their police departments.

The city of Poulan covers less than two square miles, about three hours south of Atlanta. According to the U. S. Census, the city’s population was 760 in 2022.

Contact ANF Investigative Reporter Andy Pierrotti at andy.pierrotti@wanf.com.

Masters said when he started the job, he believed he was helping keep the city safe. His opinion changed when he claims he was told to write at least four to eight speeding tickets a day.

“Those tickets paid for the car, paid for my salary, paid for the maintenance of the vehicle, the incidentals for the department and paid for city services,” Masters said he was told by his boss.

City records show Masters often wrote dozens of tickets a week, second only to the city’s assistant police chief at the time. Masters admits to writing tickets he would not have issued if he wasn’t pressured by the city.

“I just feel so sick about why I was doing this and really, I should have found another department fast,” Masters said.

Watson said when he didn’t write enough tickets, he lost out on training opportunities. “I started asking questions, like ‘Why was there such a push for these citations, especially this amount? Where’s the money going?’” Watson said. He said his boss told him the citations were needed to make the city money.

According to Poulan city records, Masters and Watson faced no disciplinary actions while they worked there. Watson resigned in September 2021. Masters said he was terminated around the same time for no cause over a disagreement with the police chief. He filed a wrongful termination lawsuit and later settled with the city.

Neither Masters or Watson currently work in law enforcement.

An Atlanta News First Investigation uncovered 44 percent of Poulan’s city budget came from fines and forfeitures in 2022, revenue collected by the police force. It was nearly 50 percent the year before.

Poulan has a long history of excessive ticketing claims. Fifteen years ago, the Georgia Department of Public Safety (DPS) investigated its police department over allegations it was profiting off drivers.

While it cleared the agency of wrongdoing, it uncovered 103 percent of its budget came from traffic citations. The DPS investigator wrote in 2008 the city had an “unusually large budget for a five officer police department for a town with a population of 1,729 residents.”

The city of Poulan is no outlier. State and municipal records show at least 17 cities in Georgia relied on 25 percent or more of their revenue from fines and forfeitures from 2020 to 2022.

An analysis of Georgia municipal budgets conducted by The Reason Foundation revealed similar results in a report published in February.

According to a different report produced by the Institute for Justice, Georgia ranks as the worst state in the country with laws that enable or encourage what it calls ‘taxation by citation.’

“That’s more than problematic,” said state Rep. Joseph Gullett (R-Dallas). “It takes money to fund the city, but it doesn’t need to be driven strictly by tickets. It needs to be about public safety.”

Georgia law allows the state to revoke or suspend speed detection device permits when ticket revenue exceeds 35 percent of the police department’s budget, but that only involves tickets for speeding-related fines. That means cities can collect as much revenue as they want from other traffic offenses, like tinted windows, obscured license plates and expired vehicle registrations.

Gullett wants to find a legislative solution to address the loophole.

“The best government [is] the one closest to the people, but sometimes they get it wrong,” Gullett said. “That’s when we have to go step in and try to right the ship.”

Poulan city officials declined recent interview requests, but its attorney, Tommy Coleman, told Atlanta News First Investigates earlier this year lawmakers should leave South Georgia municipalities alone.

“Cities and counties in Georgia, and other places, ought to be the master of their own destiny,” Coleman said. “They ought to better control their own revenue.”

This past July, another South Georgia city with a history of excessive enforcement claims lost its ability to write speeding tickets for nearly six months after a state investigation uncovered it altered tickets to hide how much the city collected from citations.

According to a letter by the commissioner of the DPS, the agency suspended the speed detection device permits for the city of Lenox for 180 days this past July. The state’s investigation found the city “consistently altered” tickets that “had the effect of excluding the fines and forfeitures for citations issued for speeding.”

That practice allowed the city to circumvent the state law that caps revenue from speeding fines at 35 percent of a police department’s budget. After the DPS audited the city, it discovered Lenox generated nearly 40 percent from speeding citations last year.

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