Associate Traffic Enforcement Agent Study Guide 2017
Get this from a library! Traffic enforcement agent: test preparation study guide, questions & answers. [National Learning Corporation.;].
About What Is the Traffic Enforcement Agent Exam? To become a NYPD Traffic Enforcement Agent, you must take the Traffic Enforcement Agent (TEA) exam. Some of the duties of the job include issuing summonses to illegally parked vehicles, directing traffic at intersections, testifying at administrative hearing offices and court, and preparing required reports, as well as sometimes even being called upon to operate a motor vehicle. What Do Those Who Score High Receive? Receiving a high score on the TEA exam increases your chances of becoming an agent. The NYPD Traffic Enforcement Agents Division is part of one of the largest law enforcement agencies in New York City and the United States.
There are about 2,300 Traffic Enforcement Agents in the country. The starting salary for a Traffic Enforcement Agent is $29,217, which increases to $33,600 after two years. Other benefits of the job include paid vacation and sick leave, medical and dental plans, and a 401K. What Are the Challenges to Passing? The Traffic Enforcement Agent exam contains ten sections. The questions are in the multiple-choice format, and you need a score of 70% to pass.
Becoming familiar with the test will help increase your score as well as your chances of becoming a Traffic Enforcement Agent. Why You Need a PrepPack™ for the Traffic Enforcement Agent Exam You can prepare for the test before taking it. Our PrepPack™ includes timed practice tests and study guides, and the practice tests are accompanied by detailed answer explanations. By practicing, you up your chances of achieving a high score on the test. A high score not only ensures that you pass the exam, but it also gives you a better chance of gaining employment over the other candidates.
What Do You Get with Your School Safety Agent PrepPack™? Our PrepPack™ provides you full access to the most comprehensive practice resources for the different sections on the exam. We offer 68 practice tests and drills for all sections of the test. The PrepPack™ also includes study guides that elaborate on the different methods and tips for solving memory and thinking questions as well as basic math questions. Traffic Enforcement Agent Exam Sections The exam measures the skills needed to be a successful Traffic Enforcement Agent. The exam is computerized and consists of multiple-choice questions.
The following job-related qualities are measured:. Written Comprehension – These questions test your ability to understand written sentences and paragraphs. Written Expression – You are tested on your ability to convey a clear written message in English. Memory questions – This section measures your memory for information expressed in words, numbers, pictures, and procedures. Problem Sensitivity – These questions test how well you identify a problem and its elements, and whether or not you can detect an error. Information Ordering – The questions test your ability to comply with a rule or a set of rules and arrange things or actions in a certain order.
For example, to perform mathematical or logical operations and to arrange numbers, letters, words, pictures, procedures, sentences, etc. Spatial Orientation – You are tested on your understanding of spatial relativity between an object and yourself. Deductive Reasoning – This section tests your ability to apply general rules to specific problems and to come up with logical answers.
Inductive Reasoning – This section assesses your ability to combine together separate pieces of information or specific answers to problems, thus forming a general rule or conclusion. Mathematical Reasoning – These questions test your ability to understand and organize a problem, as well as determine the suitable mathematical method or formula that will produce a solution. Number Facility – You are assessed on your ability to solve simple mathematical operations—adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing—as well as finding percentages and taking square roots. The School Safety Agent Hiring Process To become a Traffc Enforcement Agent, you are required to be at least 18 years of age at the time of appointment, have a high school diploma or GED, pass a character and background investigation, and pass a drug screening. You must be a New York City resident for at least 90 days before the appointment and reside in one of the five boroughs of New York City. You must also pay a $75.00 fee for fingerprinting as part of the investigation process. In addition, you must possess a driver's license valid in the State of New York.
The Benefits of Being Ready Practicing for the exam is the best way to ensure you are selected to join New York's finest as a Traffic Enforcement Agent. Our PrepPack™ can help secure your success. By preparing for the exam with our practice tests, you will become comfortable with the style of the questions and the format of the test.
Harris, University of Toledo College of Law An American Civil Liberties Union Special Report June 1999 INTRODUCTION On a hot summer afternoon in August 1998, 37-year-old U.S. Army Sergeant First Class Rossano V.
Gerald and his young son Gregory drove across the Oklahoma border into a nightmare. A career soldier and a highly decorated veteran of Desert Storm and Operation United Shield in Somalia, SFC Gerald, a black man of Panamanian descent, found that he could not travel more than 30 minutes through the state without being stopped twice: first by the Roland City Police Department, and then by the Oklahoma Highway Patrol. During the second stop, which lasted two-and-half hours, the troopers terrorized SFC Gerald's 12-year-old son with a police dog, placed both father and son in a closed car with the air conditioning off and fans blowing hot air, and warned that the dog would attack if they attempted to escape.
Halfway through the episode – perhaps realizing the extent of their lawlessness – the troopers shut off the patrol car's video evidence camera. Perhaps, too, the officers understood the power of an image to stir people to action. SFC Gerald was only an infant in 1963 when a stunned nation watched on television as Birmingham Police Commissioner 'Bull' Connor used powerful fire hoses and vicious police attack dogs against nonviolent black civil rights protesters. That incident, and Martin Luther King, Jr.' S stirring I Have a Dream speech at the historic march on Washington in August of that year, were the low and high points, respectively, of the great era of civil rights legislation: the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
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How did it come to be, then, that 35 years later SFC Gerald found himself standing on the side of a dusty road next to a barking police dog, listening to his son weep while officers rummaged through his belongings simply because he was black? I feel like I'm a guy who's pretty much walked the straight line and that's respecting people and everything. We just constantly get harassed. So we just feel like we can't go anywhere without being bothered. I'm not trying to bother anybody.
But yet a cop pulls me over and says I'm weaving in the road. And I just came from a friend's house, no alcohol, nothing.
It just makes you wonder – was it just because I'm black?' – James, 28, advertising account executive Rossano and Gregory Gerald were victims of discriminatory racial profiling by police. There is nothing new about this problem. Police abuse against people of color is a legacy of African American enslavement, repression, and legal inequality.
Indeed, during hearings of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders ('The Kerner Commission') in the fall of 1967 where more than 130 witnesses testified about the events leading up to the urban riots that had taken place in 150 cities the previous summer, one of the complaints that came up repeatedly was 'the stopping of Negroes on foot or in cars without obvious basis.' Significant blame for this rampant abuse of power also can be laid at the feet of the government's 'war on drugs,' a fundamentally misguided crusade enthusiastically embraced by lawmakers and administrations of both parties at every level of government. From the outset, the war on drugs has in fact been a war on people and their constitutional rights, with African Americans, Latinos and other minorities bearing the brunt of the damage. It is a war that has, among other depredations, spawned racist profiles of supposed drug couriers. On our nation's highways today, police ostensibly looking for drug criminals routinely stop drivers based on the color of their skin.
This practice is so common that the minority community has given it the derisive term, 'driving while black or brown' – a play on the real offense of 'driving while intoxicated.' One of the core principles of the Fourth Amendment is that the police cannot stop and detain an individual without some reason – probable cause, or at least reasonable suspicion – to believe that he or she is involved in criminal activity. But recent Supreme Court decisions allow the police to use traffic stops as a pretext in order to 'fish' for evidence.
Both anecdotal and quantitative data show that nationwide, the police exercise this discretionary power primarily against African Americans and Latinos. No person of color is safe from this treatment anywhere, regardless of their obedience to the law, their age, the type of car they drive, or their station in life. In short, skin color has become evidence of the propensity to commit crime, and police use this 'evidence' against minority drivers on the road all the time. DRUG TRAFFICKERS ARE NOT 'MOSTLY MINORITIES' Racial profiling is based on the premise that most drug offenses are committed by minorities. The premise is factually untrue, but it has nonetheless become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because police look for drugs primarily among African Americans and Latinos, they find a disproportionate number of them with contraband.
Therefore, more minorities are arrested, prosecuted, convicted, and jailed, thus reinforcing the perception that drug trafficking is primarily a minority activity. This perception creates the profile that results in more stops of minority drivers. At the same time, white drivers receive far less police attention, many of the drug dealers and possessors among them go unapprehended, and the perception that whites commit fewer drug offenses than minorities is perpetuated. And so the cycle continues. This vicious cycle carries with it profound personal and societal costs.
It is both symptomatic and symbolic of larger problems at the intersection of race and the criminal justice system. It results in the persecution of innocent people based on their skin color. It has a corrosive effect on the legitimacy of the entire justice system. It deters people of color from cooperating with the police in criminal investigations. And in the courtroom, it causes jurors of all races and ethnicities to doubt the testimony of police officers when they serve as witnesses, making criminal cases more difficult to win.
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When we make a stop, it's not based on race or gender or anything of that nature. It's based on probable cause that some law is being broken, whether it's traffic or otherwise.
We have to have a reason.' – Lincoln Hampton, spokesman for the Illinois State Police (Chicago Tribune 4/4/99) Yet despite overwhelming evidence – including the police department's own statistics on traffic stops – officials in law enforcement continue to deny the reality of racial profiling on our nation's highways. Some deny that the phenomenon of racial profiling even exists, while others declare with indignation that their officers do not stop motorists on the basis of skin color. Still others argue without apology that making disproportionate numbers of traffic stops of African Americans and other minorities is not discrimination, but rational law enforcement. But as one officer learned, such 'honesty' can be a dangerous counterpoint to official denials of profiling.
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Carl Williams, New Jersey's Chief of Troopers, was dismissed in March 1999 by Governor Christine Todd Whitman soon after a news article appeared in which he defended profiling because, he said, 'mostly minorities' trafficked in marijuana and cocaine. Williams' remarks received wide media attention at a time when Whitman and other state officials were already facing heightened media scrutiny over recent incidents of profiling and public anger over police mistreatment of black suspects.
Whitman and her attorney general, Peter Verniero, recouped from Williams' remarks somewhat when they issued a statistical report on April 20, 1999, acknowledging that the problem of racial profiling is, as Verniero put it, 'real, not imagined.' The credibility of that admission was seriously undermined, however, when Whitman told The New York Times that evidence of racial profiling is 'not something the state had any reason to anticipate.' Surely Whitman had not forgotten that, for the past five years, her legal department had fought a court ruling that a policy of racial profiling was in operation on the New Jersey Turnpike? The court had lambasted the 'utter failure by the State Police hierarchy to monitor and control. 1999 cavalier owners manual.
Or investigate the many claims of institutional discrimination.' Can it be a coincidence that only a few hours before Whitman and Verniero issued their April 20 report – and one week before the state's appeal was to be argued in court – word came suddenly that the state had dropped its appeal? As events in New Jersey demonstrate, even when faced with a lawsuit, statistical evidence from independent experts, public pressure and intensive news coverage, officials in law enforcement and government are not eager to acknowledge the problem of racial profiling. The ACLU believes that addressing the problem will require a multi-faceted effort. Our state affiliates and other civil rights advocates have brought lawsuits based on showings of discrimination by law enforcement agencies, but legal action is only a beginning; these cases are always difficult, long-term efforts that take considerable resources and plaintiffs of unusual fortitude. For instance, a lawsuit filed in Oklahoma earlier this month on behalf of SFC Gerald and his son may take years to resolve.
Legislation at the federal and state levels and local voluntary efforts can advance the momentum to collect accurate data on the problem and rein in overzealous – and sometimes illegal – law enforcement practices. Fighting crime is surely a high priority. But it must be done without damaging other important values: the freedom to go about our business without unwarranted police interference and the right to be treated equally before the law, without regard to race or ethnicity. 'Driving while black' assails these basic American ideals. And unless we address this problem, all of us – not just people of color – stand to lose. THE ROAD TO 'DRIVING WHILE BLACK' The pervasiveness of racial profiling by the police in the enforcement of our nation's drug laws is the consequence of the escalating the so-called war on drugs.
Drug use and drug selling are not confined to racial and ethnic minorities in the U.S.; indeed five times as many whites use drugs. But the war on drugs has, since its earliest days, targeted people of color. The fact that skin color has now become a proxy for criminality is an inevitable outcome of this process. The latest escalation of the war on drugs was declared officially in 1982, when It is totally unacceptable to engage in racial profiling of any kind.
We're proud of the record we have. It is really shocking that our department would be singled out as some kind of test case.' – Bob Ricks, Oklahoma Department of Public Safety Commissioner President Ronald Reagan established the Task Force on Crime in South Florida under Vice President George Bush's direction. The primary mission of the Task Force was to intensify air and sea operations against drug smuggling in the South Florida area, but it was not long before the Florida Highway Patrol entered the fray.
In 1985, the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles issued guidelines for the police on 'The Common Characteristics of Drug Couriers.' The guidelines cautioned troopers to be suspicious of rental cars, 'scrupulous obedience to traffic laws,' and drivers wearing 'lots of gold,' or who do not 'fit the vehicle,' and 'ethnic groups associated with the drug trade.' Traffic stops were initiated by the state troopers using this overtly race-based profile. The emergence of crack in the spring of 1986 and a flood of lurid and often exaggerated press accounts of inner-city crack use ushered in a period of intense public concern about illegal drugs, and helped reinforce the impression that drug use was primarily a minority problem. Enforcement of the nation's drug laws at the street level focused more and more on poor communities of color. In the mid- to late-1980s, many cities initiated major law enforcement programs to deal with street-level drug dealing.
'Operation Pressure Point' in New York was an attempt to rid the predominantly Hispanic Lower East Side of the drug trade. Operation Invincible in Memphis, Operation Clean Sweep in Chicago, Operation Hammer in Los Angeles, and the Red Dog Squad in Atlanta all targeted poor, minority, urban neighborhoods where drug dealing tended to be open and easy to detect. The goal of these inner-city efforts was to make as many arrests as possible, and in that respect, they succeeded. Nationwide, arrests for drug possession reported by state and local police nearly doubled from 400,000 in 1981 to 762,718 in 1988. Comparable figures for arrests for drug sale and manufacture rose from 150,000 in 1981 to 287,858 in 1988.
Minorities were disproportionately represented in these figures. According to the government's own reports, 80 percent of the country's cocaine users are white, and the 'typical cocaine user is a middle-class, white suburbanite.' But law enforcement tactics that concentrated on the inner city drug trade were very visibly filling the jails and prisons with minority drug law offenders, feeding the misperception that most drug users and dealers were black and Latino. Thus a 'drug courier profile' with unmistakable racial overtones took hold in law enforcement.
The profile, described by one court as 'an informally compiled abstract of characteristics thought typical.