Guess who cellphone-ticket flap hurts the most?

Keith McCaskill was on a mission just over four years ago when he took over as Winnipeg's police chief.

He wanted to improve relationships between the police service and the public, which he advertised by painting the new core value -- "Building Relationships"-- on every cruiser.

But somewhere along that road paved with good intentions, his mission was symbolically pulled over and exposed for what it is.

Mission impossible.

Actually, the road where it most obviously happened is a St. James stretch of Portage Avenue where, last Friday, a passing general patrol tagged a senior citizen for allegedly holding a cellphone to his ear.

Problem is, the senior citizen says not only was he not talking on a cellphone, he doesn't even own one.

The story, which has since gone national, comes at an awkward time for the Winnipeg Police Service, just after the service announced general patrol officers would be stepping up traffic enforcement.

But it also comes at a time when the service is under budgetary pressure, just as it was three years ago when it imposed what were interpreted then as two-tickets-per-shift traffic quotas.

In parts of the United States, quotas -- even masked as "productivity goals" -- are so frowned upon that in some jurisdictions such as New York and Texas, for example, they are illegal. Why? Because of the punishment police management can inflict on officers who don't meet them, penalties such as loss of overtime or unfavourable evaluations.

This time, Winnipeg police might have learned from the leaked memo in 2009 because while reports say downtown division cops are expected to almost triple their normal 250-a-month traffic ticket total, there have been no memos -- or no leaked memos -- detailing any personal ticket targets for officers.

One street officer I spoke to laughed at the suggestion.

"There are no quotas," he said.

The official police line is the traffic enforcement campaign is driven by public safety, not covering things such as the cost of officers who, ironically, will only write tickets on overtime.

Nevertheless, the public has heard the police service expects its general patrol officers to write more tickets, and I expect most people take that to mean there are quotas. So you can see how, under the perceived circumstances, a general-patrol unit tagging an elderly driver for an alleged cellphone violation could become a public relations sinkhole for police and -- unfairly for the most part -- those officers trying to "build relationships" with people on the street.

A public relations sinkhole, I might add, that police management has helped dig even deeper.

Initially, the police service reacted to the cellphone ticket controversy the way it routinely does. It said it couldn't comment in the event the case winds up before the courts.

But then five days later -- stung by the media coverage and, no doubt, in an effort to back the officers -- someone at the Public Safety Building attempted to pour cold water on the fire by issuing an unusually timed evening news release.

Trouble is, the cold water turned out to be gasoline.

The statement came across as police doing damage control, and only kept the story alive, front and centre, for another day.

In the police service's defence, what it couldn't say -- but I will -- is the senior officer in the cruiser that pulled over the senior citizen last Friday is a top-notch cop, not given to handing out frivolous or borderline traffic tickets.

Which brings me to the most aggrieved victims of the police service's clumsy handling of this traffic ticket incident, and the traffic-writing edict that preceded it.

No, not the public.

The most aggrieved victims are officers on the front lines whose integrity has been cast into the pit of public perception by all of this.

The officers who have to listen to the backtalk on the street and in the coffee shops for doing what they've been ordered to do.

The officers who have been tainted by the new Winnipeg police slogan.

"Building Relationships, One Ticket at a Time."

gordon.sinclair@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition March 8, 2012 B1