Spaulding are 100 percent dedicated to the safety of Floridians and visitors. Rick Scott has said the state is on pace to set an all-time record for out-of-state visitors in 2017.Īsked Tuesday about the sudden retirement, Scott’s office provided a two-sentence statement: “FHP personnel decisions are made by FHP. It also could be detrimental to Florida’s image as a haven for tourists.

F.H. The idea of ticket quotas in Florida has caused an uproar with the motoring public, prompted criticism from key legislators. This application helps you check your neck posture by measuring the degree of your cervical spine based on the side view of your upper body and provides corresponding exercises to improve your neck posture. Spaulding’s boss, Terry Rhodes, executive director of the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, reiterated Tuesday: “Quotas are not legal and are not tolerated within the Florida Highway Patrol.” Spaulding said that was not a reward, and that troopers have never been given incentives to write tickets. The Times/Herald obtained two more internal FHP emails in which FHP supervisors in Miami-Dade congratulated troopers for meeting or exceeding goals for traffic stops and as a result were allowed to switch their days off from weekdays to more favorable weekends. The goal, Thomas explained, is for troopers to spend less time in their black and tan cruisers and more time talking to drivers. In a recent Times/Herald interview, Thomas downplayed the significance of Welch’s email and called it “more of a want” than a quota. “This is not a quota it is what we are asking you to do to support this important initiative.”

“The patrol wants to see two citations each hour,” Welch wrote to troopers who work on an overtime detail known as SOAR, or Statewide Overtime Action Response, a taxpayer-funded initiative to improve highway safety. Thomas was making $131,000 a year.Ī veteran FHP major under Thomas’ command, Mark Welch, saw his 35-year career abruptly end two weeks ago after the Times/Herald reported that he sent a July 28 email to dozens of troopers in an eight-county region that officers said was a mandate for quotas, which are illegal under state law. Thomas becomes the second high-ranking FHP official to lose his job and his six-figure salary in two weeks. Navy, Thomas joined FHP and patrolled the busy highways of Miami-Dade and Broward counties for many years, recalling one very difficult July when he had to notify relatives of seven people who died in car crashes. Thomas grew up in working-class Homestead where he said a state trooper was a personal role model who joked about a “curfew” so that teenagers wouldn’t be roaming the streets late at night.Īfter serving in the U.S. The patrol is still reviewing to see if other administrators gave a similar two-tickets-an-hour edict, raising the possibility that more premature retirements may be on the way.

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