The Chicago Sun-Times reported today, that Chicago police have written 84,000 fewer tickets than last year, which by year’s end translates into a 9% decrease in tickets and possibly a $6-$8 million dollar decrease in revenue–at least by the Sun-Times calculations.

The article is ostensibly about police performance in general and Supt. Weis’ intention to implement an evaluation system on Chicago’s police officers. I’ve highlighted the pertinent excerpts below along with the link to the original article.

But, within this article is this very interesting parking ticket data. The downturn is, of course, great for us motorists and perhaps offsets most of the gains in parking ticket revenue the Dept. of Revenue’s PEA’s have posted recently.

Excellent news!

Chicago’s top cop to rank and file: you’d better measure up

Chicago Police arrests and parking tickets are down, potentially a $6 million falloff in revenue for 2008

By FRANK MAIN AND FRAN SPIELMAN Staff Reporters

With murders up, arrests down and officers writing fewer parking tickets, Chicago cops will soon have to measure up in performance evaluations for the first time since 2002, top department officials said Monday.

Officers, meanwhile, have written about 84,000 fewer tickets than last year. If that pace continues, the department will end the year with about 1.49 million tickets, down 9 percent from the 1.63 million police-issued tickets last year.

At $75 per ticket, the 84,000 ticket falloff would cost the city $6.3 million. If the fines averaged $100 a ticket, the loss would be $8.4 million.

As usual great reporting from The Sun-Time’s Fran Spielman and Frank Main!