Automating the Ticketing Process

When officers issue a citation – or multiple citations – it directly impacts the safety of officers on the roadside. This is especially true in Wyoming, where a new citation is required to be written for each violation.

In many instances, law enforcement officers using ticket books for citations need to fill out new citations for each offense. Not only is this time consuming, but this process was also dangerous because it meant deputies were spending longer periods of time outside their patrol vehicles and on the side of the road where accidents were more likely to occur.

Aside from the dangerous conditions while writing tickets on the side of the road, public safety administrator Dominic Davis with the Laramie County Sheriff’s Office explained handwritten tickets caused difficulty to records and court staff with legibility and accuracy issues. Civilian staff often had to reach out to the officers for clarification, extending the process even further.

“When you have anyone on the roadside for a period of time, it increases the risk that something could happen,” Davis said. “We needed to get this process completed more efficiently so that ultimately we improved safety for law enforcement officers and the public.”

To mitigate these problems, the agency adopted an automated ticketing process to improve safety and efficiency for officers in the field. Once automated, the ticket writing process became much more fluent and efficient. Not only was the ticket writing faster, but the officers were able to get off the streets much faster and making the process safer.

“With drop-down boxes and pre-population capabilities that come straight from the National Crime Incident Center (NCIC), we can really write tickets so much faster,” Davis said. “It eliminates guess work and tickets process straight through to records and the court system.”

Another added benefit that comes with the auto-population capabilities is that officers no longer have to fill out multiple citations when there are multiple offences involved. Now the officer can just fill out additional fields when there is more than one infraction.

“We’ve sped up our ticketing process exponentially,” Davis said.