The Virginia Police Benevolent Association says it is working with state lawmakers to draft legislation banning ticket-writing quotas for law enforcement agencies across the state.

Virginia State Police, which the PBA says uses the practice that requires troopers to write a certain amount of tickets as a measure of effectiveness, initially denied using quotas.

When confronted with an email obtained by the Richmond Times-Dispatch in which a first sergeant scolded troopers for writing too few tickets and told troopers they should write at least five a day, a spokeswoman for the department acknowledged that the department’s various offices around the state set a target number of tickets to write, calling them “average benchmarks” rather than quotas.

“The reason we don’t have quotas is not because quotas are inherently a bad thing, but because they would not work for VSP,” said spokeswoman Corinne Geller. “Each VSP Area Office has different roles and responsibilities in their community. In addition, what a trooper does each day varies greatly. It would be nearly impossible to set a ticket quota even if we wanted to.”

Ticket quotas are illegal is several states, including California, New York, Florida and Texas, over concerns that police could unnecessarily stop drivers to meet mandated goals.