Elgin police going to electronic ticketing system

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Updated: August 4, 2011 4:20PM

ELGIN — By the end of May, it should be easier to get a traffic ticket in Elgin.

That’s not to say police have been put on some sort of quota system for writing citations. Rather, officers soon will be issuing computer-generated tickets for moving violations rather than handwritten citations.

The move is part of a modernization of the police department’s records management system and is tied to the city’s creation of an adjudication courtroom for various sorts of fines levied by the city.

“Electronic ticketing is just a small part of the larger picture, but a highly visible one,” said Lt. Glenn Theriault, who has been overseeing the projects.

The new method will reduce the amount of time it takes an officer to write a ticket, making it quicker for violators being cited for minor matters to get back to their appointed rounds, Theriault said. A quicker turnaround also might make ticket-writing a safer procedure, leaving a squad car and the person pulled over less exposed to traffic.

“The real efficiency is that the information is put in the system and transferred electronically,” Theriault said.

That means tickets automatically go into the court’s system, and towed cars are listed instantly as part of a tow yard’s inventory.

Computer-generated tickets also should cut down on the number of errors attributed to poor penmanship or incorrect entries by police. Tickets will look like grocery store receipts and be generated on thermal paper on printers in squad cars.

Police will use a “cloud” system on laptop computers already in their cars.

The cost of those printers is about $900 each, with about 90 units purchased thus far, Theriault said. The software was put together at a cost of about $60,000 — considerably less than prices Theriault said he had seen from bigger vendors. For that, Elgin police worked with Chaya Friedman, who runs a one-person company called Dacra, based in Des Plaines.

Going local

Friedman has been assisting Elgin with an overhaul of its records management system, which began about 18 months ago. A step tied to this was creating an adjudication division in the police department. Theriault heads the division, which oversees the processing of fines issued by the city across several departments in what the lieutenant said is the city’s own “hyperlocal court.”

He explained that most traffic moving violations — called state tickets — are prosecuted by a state’s attorney’s office and processed through a respective county circuit.

County courts also handle what police call local tickets, which can be prosecuted by city attorneys and include matters such as having no auto insurance. Hyperlocal tickets also can be issued for parking violations, pet and noise issues, property maintenance problems, towing and other matters codified by the city.

The adjudication division came about after the city decided to add new fines of up to $500 paid to the city when a car is towed for reasons such as DUI arrests and car noise ordinance violations. In 2010, the city billed about $1.3 million in such fines and thus far has collected more than 85 percent of that money, Theriault said.

With the new electronic recordkeeping, the division also makes Elgin more adept at reminding people of the fines they owe. The new process also can expedite matters when someone is dealing with multiple citations over various dates.

E-tickets spreading

Eventually, other city departments will be writing so-called e-tickets, too, Theriault said. As examples, in public works, a plow driver could cite a business that pushes snow piles into the street; the water department could ticket someone who opens and uses a hydrant; and code enforcement could use the same system when addressing building violations.

Late last week, Theriault was ironing out further details of integrating what Elgin will have on the streets with Kane and Cook County court offices.

Theriault said Kane County Circuit Court Clerk Deb Seyller had been making software available to municipalities to use for writing tickets. But Theriault noted there were some hidden costs for Elgin associated with that, namely integrating the software with the computer equipment and systems the city had.

Looking for something that could function well for officers in their squads, Theriault said Elgin police decided to take the electronic ticketing system in-house. They worked with Friedman, who designed something tailor-made for their needs. In addition to ticketing, the project included creating a program for towing inventory and for abandoned cars.

Working with state

With the ticketing program, an officer will enter an Illinois license plate number into the system if the car belongs to the driver, and an Illinois driver’s license number if it is not the driver’s car. That ties into the state’s police databases, which return with pertinent information about the car and driver. From that, Elgin’s system can pull out what it needs and put it onto the ticket.

In theory, that means police won’t have to write such information as a name and address over and over but will rely on the new software to fill it in. It also makes is easier for police to fill out state-required racial data paperwork.

However, as Officer Marie Glasby demonstrated, the way the state puts information into its own system doesn’t always make it simple to pull it into the fields created for the city’s system. And since there is no uniform ticketing method across the country — on a nationwide database — information on people from out of state being ticketed will still be typed in by hand, Glasby said.

Theriault said Glasby has become a de facto computer programmer, working closely with Friedman on the project and serving as a translator between Friedman and police for the highly detailed work being done. He also complimented Sgt. Joanne Demmin, who is part of the adjudication team.

Parking control officers such as Jon Lunsford have been using an electronic system for more than a year to issue tickets for parking violations, which has served as a beta version for the traffic ticketing project.

“It’s a little quicker than writing a ticket by hand. It’s also cut down on the amount of paperwork and has meant less possibility for errors,” Lunsford said.

Having the ticketing database readily available will help police solve crimes, too, Theriault said.

For instance, if a particular type of car was spotted at an incident, police can put its description into the system to see if it matches any vehicle that’s been ticketed. Owners’ names also can be checked to see if they are familiar to investigators.