Speed Through the Ticketing Process
Each state deals with a variety of reporting standards that can dramatically impact citation writing processes. In Wyoming, one element that can slow the ticketing process is the state’s requirement that a new ticket is written for every violation or statute offense.
In the past, when a deputy with the Laramie County Sheriff’s Office pulled over an individual for a traffic stop, if it was necessary to write more than one citation, that meant deputies wrote multiple copies of tickets.
Not only was this process time consuming, but it meant deputies spent more time on the roadside, which can be dangerous.
“When you’re writing that many tickets and on the roadside in all types of weather, it’s going to impact the accuracy and legibility of a ticket,” public safety administrator Dominic Davis said. “As an agency, it didn’t make sense to keep doing that when there’s technology out there that can make it easier.”
In addition to the time spent writing tickets, records and court personnel often times had difficulty reading the tickets and had to reach out to officers for clarification. This process would cause delays and even resulted in citations being dismissed when proper information could not be gathered.
“Knowing there was technology out there that could mitigate these issues and make us more efficient meant we had to make a change,” Davis said. “We knew we had to automate the ticketing process.”
Once automated, the ticketing process became more fluid and efficient. This led to improved accuracy, faster ticketing processes, better integration with public safety and courts systems, and improved safety.
“When we automated our ticketing process, it saved so much time and got our officers back on the street faster,” Davis said. “With drop-down boxes that are easy to fill out and pre-population capabilities that come straight from National Crime Information Center (NCIC), we get fully filled out tickets populated with the correct information. That means there’s no more guessing involved and tickets go along the process through records and to the courts faster.”
With the auto-population capabilities, officers no longer need to fill out multiple citations in the incident of multiple offenses. Instead, the officer can document all infractions in one process by filling out additional fields on the initial citation.
“Our ticket writing processes are phenomenal,” Davis said. “What’s even better is that we use the same vendor for our public safety and courts solutions, so that means we’re able to continuously share information through integration or interfaces throughout the whole process. It’s a huge benefit to us to have one vendor for all of these systems.”