It's a sad state of affairs indeed. Unfortunately, now that we have something called "merit raises" deputies are constantly dancing like jesters for their supervisors, who threaten them with a rip on a daily/weekly/monthly basis for falling behind on traffic stops, business checks, arrests, juvenile checks, DUI's, field interviews, ect. If you get two rips, no raise. So, you have numbers driven cops out there trying to outdo the next guy because if you don't, you are an underperformer. In this game, there's always a guy at the bottom, an underperformer, which is so much worse than the "quota" system everyone fears. If everyone only needed to hit a quota, then life would be easy. Your supervisor won't give you a number to hit, you just cannot be the guy with the lowest numbers in any of the above areas of concern. If half of the squad is tied for the bottom number, then half the squad is underperforming and unmotivated. This creates quite a dynamic of law enforcers. If a deputy is being threatened with low numbers, everyone goes to jail, everyone gets stopped, everyone gets searched, everyone gets arrested, everyone gets a ticket, until the underperforming deputy's numbers improve. Now the guy he had to beat on his squad has to beat his numbers. It's Hunger Games and everyone pretends to be a team, only to learn each others weaknesses, so they can be used against each other. At no time does management follow up to see what kind of quality is going into law enforcement. That would require more than looking at a spreadsheet.

In this political climate, the public wouldn't support the sheriff giving everyone a 1% raise for just showing up and taking calls now would they? They expect performers for that money.