COEUR d'ALENE — Contrary to popular belief, police departments don’t have quotas on how many traffic tickets they have to write.

Nor do they rely on an end-of-the-month ticket-writing bonanza to keep the City Hall lights on.

In his time as chief of the Coeur d'Alene Police Department, Lee White has helped shatter those myths locally by leading an effort among his officers to prioritize education over enforcement. One of the results of those efforts, according to data provided by the department, has been a reduction of almost 900 tickets being issued year over year.

"I think in the past we maybe focused a little too much on the enforcement part and not enough education," White said. "If we can solve a problem through education, we'd rather do that than issue a citation. Our guys have taken that message and run with it. We're doing a fantastic job now with educating the public and only writing infractions when it's a blatant violation or clear that the education piece wouldn't work."

The stats back up his claims.

From Sept. 1, 2013, to Aug. 31, 2014, Coeur d'Alene police officers wrote 3,961 traffic citations. White joined the department in September of 2014 and, over the same period of time in 2014 and 2015, Coeur d'Alene police officers wrote 3,103 tickets.

Those figures, according to White, tell only part of the story.

"That doesn't take into account the addition of manpower," White said. "We've added a body to our traffic program through a grant we received. So, we have an additional person doing traffic enforcement and we're not seeing a huge spike in traffic citations."

Officer interactions with individuals in Coeur d'Alene, White added, are up as well because of the additional officer in the traffic program.

"That's not increasing the number of tickets we're writing, simply because we are doing a great job at getting the message out to people that they should drive safe and not engage in risky behaviors just to save a second or two," he said.

White said there are three pillars of traffic enforcement — education, enforcement and engineering. Law enforcement agencies are able to play a small role in the engineering component through recommending traffic pattern changes to city officials, White added.

"The enforcement aspect, as you know, is generally when people just aren't getting the message," White said. "But we're really trying to do a lot more when it comes to educating the public on what's appropriate driving behavior and how they can drive a little bit safer.”

Assessing the revenue impact of officers writing 858 fewer tickets is challenging because, according to the city's finance department, funding derived from Kootenai County District Court-issued fines is not itemized by county officials. In addition, the city is not able to differentiate whether revenue received from citations and other infractions was generated by the Coeur d'Alene Police Department or another law enforcement agency like the Idaho State Police.