Electronic Citation a Must for Efficiency

Many states are in the process of making their police citations an electronic process. The state of Wisconsin has been using the eCitation program which is a federally funded program that streamlines the process of filing traffic citations with a variety of offices.

The process takes place in the officer's cruiser where with a click they can file directly to places such as district attorneys, courts, and Department of Transportation.
By using eCitation hand written tickets will not exist and neither will the errors they come with.

Annually hundreds of tickets get misplaced or are thrown out due to illegibility when officers handwrite citations but with eCitation everything is electronically submitted, filed, and distributed to the proper channels to different locations.
With the threat of funding being pulled Wisconsin's police force may be at risk of ultimately reverting back to the old system which exposes them to lack of efficiency.

With officers hand writing citations there is much lost time spent on the side of the road and can lead to reduced revenue loss from tickets being thrown out due to errors. By equipping officers with eCitation they can spend more time and focus on their environments and less on paperwork. Zebra Technologies offers Electronic Citation products such as mobile printers and supplies.

Integrated card readers can be added to the Zebra mobile printer to capture credit card information allowing immediate payment at point of citation.

These solutions coupled with Handheld Computers from Motorola can provide GPS Location, pictures of the drivers license, and license plate, and notes(legible ones). A signature capture is even available.
Typically the Zebra QL220 or QL420 series is used for creating the ticket. This is a direct thermal printer used with special paper that is able to endure long periods of time in sunlight. This unit coupled with a Motorola handheld computer such as the MC75 or MC55 can make a complete system.

The Motorola handheld computer can be batch, wireless, or even connected via cell phone service back to the office.
This gives immediate feedback to the department responsible for the ticket.
With special software and the right scanner, the drivers license can even be scanned to pull information on the driver.

This scan can even allow for lookups into other violations that the violator might have, possibly making the officers job a bit safer too.
To put it simply, the ROI for using this technology over manually writing the citation, is pretty evident.

Even the speed with which the officer can handle the cycle of a citation, will be expedited. Did I say he might have more time to write more tickets? Copyright (c) 2011 Carl Shackelford