Another former employee of the UCSD Parking and Transportation department has claimed that UCSD utilizes an illegal quota system by requiring officers to issue a minimum amount of parking tickets per day.

Carole Rains, former administrative analyst of the Medical Transportation and Parking Department at the UCSD Medical Center in Hillcrest, said that in July 2006, she was instructed by Director of Parking and Transportation Brian D’Autremont to double and triple the number of citations her staff of three officers were giving out.

She said the department would print out sheets comparing the number of tickets each officer had given out and distribute the comparisons to the officers pressuring them to issue more citations.

D’Autremont admitted to posting these numbers, but denied setting a quota.

“It’s a real simple equation,” he said. “You go out and write citations for what’s illegal … I don’t even want to get involved in it. I check in once every month.”

Raines said that the system encouraged officers to write fabricated tickets.

“It depends on a myriad of factors that change every day,” she said. “It’s impossible to set an arbitrary number. At least one officer was saying ‘I’m going to write however many tickets they tell me to write — I don’t care if they’re good or bad.’ Once the officer gives the ticket, he’s done. He doesn’t have to deal with appeals. It’s a major ethics issue.”

Raines, who worked for the department for 28 years and consistently received outstanding evaluations, left her position in 2006 due to health issues. She said the department began putting increased pressure on officers to give out more citations after D’Autremont became director in 2006.

An e-mail that D’Autremont sent to Raines on Dec. 16, 2005 suggested that a particular officer was not giving out enough tickets, and stated the average number of tickets given out by an officer, but instructed Raines to never call the system a quota.

“There were snarky comments that put subtle, yet overt, pressure on these people,” Raines said. “Things like ‘Your numbers are looking low’ or ‘You better watch out…’. These guys have families to support. They will do anything to please the boss, to keep their jobs.”

Raine’s claims follow similar allegations made earlier this month by former parking enforcement officer Kenneth Brennan

Brennan said he was asked by his supervisor, Marty Greenawalt, to raise the number of tickets he was giving out via an unofficial quota system.

Brennan said that parking enforcement officers were forced to give out citations for parking infractions that they would usually only issue warnings for.

Both Raines and Brennan said that current employees are too afraid of losing their jobs to confirm or deny these allegations.

Three UCSD parking enforcement officers contacted for this story refused to comment.

Readers can contact Yelena Akopian at [email protected].