Farmington, New Hampshire, police rewarding good behaviour with free pizza, fries

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In the town of Farmington, New Hampshire, if you’re caught playing by the rules, you just might be rewarded for it.

Farmington Police Chief Jay Drury told NBC News he got the idea to thank citizens for their good behaviour early this winter after he spotted a man make his way through heavy snow to get to a crosswalk.

"I said to myself, that gentlemen deserves a medal for battling the snow that we’ve had and everything else," Drury said in a recent interview.

"And it was a couple of days later, and it kept weighing on me, and I thought to myself, I can’t give him a medal but maybe I can do something else.”

The police department teamed up with a local convenience store, Crowley’s Variety & Grill, to set up the program. Officers hand out gift cards for free pizza slices and fries at the restaurant as a thank you to unsuspecting citizens “caught” using crosswalks, turn signals, and obeying other traffic laws.

The Holy Rosary Credit Union donated US$250 to help fund the program.

“We’ll know that they’re good and they can get a free small fry or grab a slice of pizza – whatever the coupon entitles them to – and they can get on with their day,” Crowley’s manager Calie Chase told WMUR. “It’s definitely the best ticket to be getting around here. That’s for sure.”

So far, the program has been a hit.

"There are way more people smarter than me, I just had a lucky idea that came from the heart and it seems to have taken a life of its own," Drury said.

The tickets will be handed out until the end of March.

Some Canadian communities have also experimented with “positive ticketing.”

Police in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, announced in November that they were launching a ticketing campaign that would reward young people caught doing good deeds, like picking up litter or crossing the street safely, with coupons for hamburgers, ice cream or movie tickets.

“Hopefully it will give them a chance to come be more approachable to us, communicate with us and talk to us as well down the road,” Constable Rob Lindsay said at the time.