[stevew20]

Instead of pushing for a data driven conclusion, what about this:

A police officer has 1.0 amount of time in a shift. If he spends 0.2 of his shift sitting at a speed trap trying to meet some quota, he has 0.8 of his shift left to patrol / help solve crimes; however, the reciprocal of this ratio could occur to, depending on which duties he is assigned.

Now step back... The entire police force has 1.0 amount of time per officer per shift. In order to meet budget goals, they allocate 0.8 of that time to speed traps. Now 0.2 of man hours are spent actually doing anything useful (hint: solving crimes do not pay the bills... ).

We can examine data to confirm this, however I don't see the need. When you have a time budget, every activity takes a portion of that time. If you spend 90% of your time playing solitaire at work, you aren't going to be very productive. The relationship is absolute, so the data should support it. If not, there is some noise interfering.

[prepend]

Logically it makes sense, but would there be no officer at all without the .8 spent on speed traps? So is it bad governing that underfunds police so it must spent .8 on ticketing? Or is it the spending .8 of time on ticketing that causes less effective police?

As a programmer, I don’t agree with the absolute that someone who spends 90% of their day playing solitaire will be less productive than another spending 0% of their day.