Chief investigative reporter Jeremy Finley of WSMV 4 Nashville puts a blunt claim on the table: former Tennessee Highway Patrol troopers say internal pressure to hit DUI numbers is pushing officers to arrest sober people.
He doesn’t leave it at rumors. He brings taped meeting audio, internal “DUI maps,” and on-camera whistleblowers who say the quiet part out loud.
Ashley Smith, a former THP trooper, opens with the gut punch. “This is corruption,” she tells Finley. “We’re ruining people’s lives. We’re being forced to ruin people’s lives.”
That quote hangs over everything that follows.
Inside the Pressure Cooker
Finley frames the problem simply. Reducing drunk driving is good and popular. But what happens when leadership ties career success to a body count of DUI arrests?
Former trooper Adam Potts doesn’t mince words with Finley: “It’s a quota.” He says he absolutely felt pressure to pull people over and make arrests to hit expectations.
He even accepts the personal fallout. When Finley asks whether he has ever arrested a sober driver for DUI, Potts replies, “Yes, sir. I’m sure I have.”
That’s a hard admission. It’s also a window into how incentives can warp judgment when the scoreboard matters more than the truth.
“Arrest Every DUI You Can Get Your Hands On”
Finley’s most damning evidence is audio from a Chattanooga-area troopers’ meeting featuring Captain Patrick Turner. On the recording, Turner is heard saying: “Arrest every DUI that you can get your hands on.”
Finley adds context: midnight-shift troopers were told 100 DUI arrests per year would be required. Turner’s message goes further – if your yearly number is low and your “contacts” per shift (drivers stopped) are anemic, “you’re gonna get spanked.”
Those are managerial words with real-world consequences. If your commander is openly benchmarking you against triple-digit DUI arrests, hesitation becomes a career risk.
Smith tells Finley this is exactly how rank-and-file hear it: if someone else is “beating you with the DUIs,” you aren’t “doing good enough.”
My take: even if leaders intend “go get ‘em” speeches as culture-building, the specific numeric goals Finley documented morph that culture into a quota game. And once numbers rule, edge cases – and innocent people – get swept up.
The Maps, the Emails, and the Official Denial
Finley also obtained emails via the Open Records Act. He shows a message from Captain Bruce McCarley with the subject line “DUI map.” The map lists each county in District 8 and, by each trooper’s name, a number the whistleblowers say reflects individual DUI arrests.
If you’re a trooper, that’s not subtle. It’s a public leaderboard.
Yet, as Finley reports, the Tennessee Highway Patrol sent a written statement flatly denying quotas: “The Tennessee Highway Patrol does not have or use quotas for traffic stops, citations, or arrests.”
THP also told Finley that troopers are “highly trained” and expected to use judgment to make stops based on observed violations and public safety needs. That’s the official line.
Finley tries repeatedly to interview the colonel. He gets a driveway exit instead. When the face of the agency won’t face the camera, the optics are brutal.
As a matter of fairness, denials deserve to be heard. But denials have to compete with artifacts. Finley has audio. He has maps. He has the words of former troopers who say the pressure was systemic. The disconnect is glaring.
When Overtime Becomes a Perverse Incentive
Finley asks a key follow-up: why would a trooper push a questionable DUI arrest? Potts gives a candid answer – premium overtime.
If late-night DUI patrols regularly generate OT, and your performance is judged by DUI volume, the system quietly nudges you to “find” more DUIs. Potts says that means feeling like, “If I’m working this shift, I’ve gotta find somebody to arrest.”
This is the danger zone of “pay for performance” in public safety. Pay structures meant to reward tough shifts can unintentionally reward questionable arrests. When pay and performance get braided to arrest counts, quality control must be ironclad. Finley’s reporting suggests it wasn’t.
The Human Cost, Case by Case
Finley references prior WSMV 4 investigations into drivers like Thomas Manus, Stephanie Fares, and Candace Slates – people arrested for DUI who were, by later accounts, sober. Those names aren’t abstract. They are the lives on the other end of a stat.
If you’re cuffed, booked, and plastered on a docket as “DUI,” you don’t just lose a night. You risk your job. Your insurance. Your reputation with neighbors and family. Even if charges are dropped later, the damage is done.
Smith tells Finley she didn’t speak up while in uniform because it would have been “career suicide.” That’s also a cost – silence enforced by fear. An institution needs pathways for dissent that don’t require losing your badge first.
Finley discloses the blemishes. Potts was fired and pleaded guilty to leaving the scene after an off-duty crash. Smith is fighting decertification over allegations she helped a family member in a DUI situation.
Critics will say they’re disgruntled. Finley gives the THP the chance to say exactly that—then shows the receipts anyway.
The recordings and maps don’t evaporate because messengers are imperfect. In fact, imperfect messengers are common in whistleblower stories. The question is whether the documents and tapes stand on their own. Here, they do.
What the Tape Really Says
Let’s be precise. Captain Turner’s recorded lines – “Arrest every DUI that you can get your hands on,” “a hundred plus DUIs a year,” “you’re gonna get spanked” – create expectations.
Maybe leadership believes those words target only legitimately impaired drivers. But a quota mindset can poison the tree.
When the metric is volume, the margin for error widens. Confirmation bias kicks in. Every lane drift looks like probable cause. Every nervous pause becomes impairment.
Finley’s reporting shows how a managerial pep talk morphs into a policy machine that produces bad arrests.
This is solvable, but only if the state is honest about incentives and culture.
First, kill numeric arrest targets. Performance should focus on lawful stops, high-quality evidence, and case outcomes – not raw totals. If a trooper makes fewer DUI arrests because they only bring rock-solid cases, that should be a gold star, not a “spanking.”
Second, separate overtime eligibility from arrest volume. Pay for shift coverage, hazardous hours, and training—not for body counts. If money isn’t dangling over the tally, temptation falls.
Third, mandate independent audits of recent DUI cases in districts where those maps circulated. If breath, blood, or field sobriety evidence doesn’t line up, vacate and expunge—fast. People shouldn’t carry a scarlet letter for a scoreboard game they never joined.
Finally, install protected whistleblower channels inside THP that bypass immediate command. If a trooper fears “career suicide” for challenging illegal pressure, leadership has already failed.
Why Finley’s Reporting Matters Beyond Tennessee
WSMV 4’s investigation, led by Finley, isn’t about dunking on one agency. It’s about a recurring temptation in American policing: “manage what you measure.” When the metric is arrests, you’ll get arrests – good, bad, and ugly.
Public safety should measure safety: fewer crashes, fewer fatalities, fewer truly impaired drivers on the road. If those move in the right direction with fewer but better DUI arrests, you’re winning.
Finley’s work is a reminder that journalism matters most when it names the cost of looking good on paper. The audio doesn’t lie. Neither does the fear you hear in Ashley Smith’s voice.
Finley closes one segment with a simple observation: despite the recordings and the maps, the agency stands by a written denial and declines a sit-down.
Potts, for his part, tells Finley he thinks the brass “really don’t care about the citizens” as much as they care about perception. That’s a bitter conclusion from someone who wore the uniform.
I’d put it this way: caring about citizens means caring about truth. If Jeremy Finley can find tapes, emails, and troopers to say the system is off the rails, the least the Tennessee Highway Patrol can do is step in front of a camera and explain why the map exists, why the captain said what he said, and how they’ll fix it.
Anything less looks exactly like what the whistleblowers describe.
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The article Whistleblower State Troopers Say Innocent Drivers Arrested for DUI Amid Quota Pressure Straight From the Top “We’re being forced to ruin people’s lives” first appeared on Survival World.
Ed spent his childhood in the backwoods of Maine, where harsh winters taught him the value of survival skills. With a background in bushcraft and off-grid living, Ed has honed his expertise in fire-making, hunting, and wild foraging. He writes from personal experience, sharing practical tips and hands-on techniques to thrive in any outdoor environment. Whether it’s primitive camping or full-scale survival, Ed’s advice is grounded in real-life challenges.
