Software may save police officers time

New software and equipment being piloted in Liberty Lake will allow police officers to spend more time on patrol and less time doing paperwork.

The city has been selected as an Eastern Washington test agency for the Eastside (Statewide Electronic Collision and Ticket Online Records Program). The city is the first in the area to get the program, which is sponsored by the Department of Licensing and the Traffic Safety Commission.

The new equipment will pair a handheld scanner, much like those used in grocery stores, and the computers already in each patrol car. Officers will scan the bar codes on driver’s licenses and newer car registrations. The information from the documents will automatically fill in the blanks of electronic traffic citations and accident reports. The electronic documents will then be transmitted to the court.

“That’s where it’s going to cut out time down considerably,” said Sgt. Clint Gibson. “We’re not sitting there hand-writing it all on the ticket.”

The tickets for criminal and noncriminal citations are different. If a person is charged with both, the officer has to fill out the same information twice. There’s also a limit of three noncriminal violations per document or two criminal violations per document. It’s not uncommon for a traffic stop to result in multiple charges. “It’s all going to be consolidated into one motion,” Gibson said. “Then we just have to fill in the violation.”

It currently takes between seven and 12 minutes per traffic stop if there is only one citation given. “It’ll save from two to five minutes per traffic contact,” he said.

The department received one equipment package at the end of the year for commercial vehicle enforcement. The state will provide three for free, leaving the department to buy four more at $800 per car. The system should be up and running in all Liberty Lake police cars by September. The system can currently scan driver’s licenses from 44 states.

The system will also come in handy for accident reports. The cars are equipped with printers, so officers can print out an accident report for the involved drivers on the spot rather than making them wait and request a copy from the Washington State Patrol.

Once installed in all the cars, the program might even save officers a daily trip downtown to the courthouse. Currently, all the paperwork filled out by officers is processed by a city clerk and then it has to be hand-carried to the courthouse.

The courts already have compatible software in place to receive the electronic documents because the program has been in use locally by the Washington State Patrol. “They have been piloting it for the courts,” Gibson said. “They’re liking it.”