People are always looking for ways to do more with less. Everyone is always trying to accomplish similar goals: increase efficiency, reduce costs, and improve effectiveness. Even though they are publicly funded, police departments are no exception.
With shrinking budgets and increased demands, police departments are always looking for ways to save time and money. One of the easiest ways to accomplish all three goals is to switch from a manual ticketing system to an electronic ticketing system for your police department’s ticket paper. This is also referred to as an eCitiation system.
Today, we’ll talk about all the ways you can reduce costs, increase efficiency, and improve effectiveness with an electronic police paper ticketing system.
eCitations Reduce Costs
Reducing costs is as important for publicly funded departments as it is for privately owned companies. There is always a budget that needs to be balanced and a bottom line that needs to be improved.
Keith Flynn is the commissioner of the Department of Public Safety. Last week, Flynn told lawmakers in the House Appropriations Committee that 20% of all tickets written were illegible. Later he clarified those remarks, saying that 10% of tickets written were dismissed by courts or the state.
There are ripple effects from losing that 10% of ticket revenue. More often than not, a portion of traffic violation revenue goes towards funding various community foundations. Flynn later went on to say, “Any time that you have human interaction with a piece of paper it provides an opportunity for something to go wrong.”
Declining revenue because of traffic violations that are thrown out adversely impacts local budgets. More often than not, a portion of traffic violation revenue goes towards funding various community foundations.
High quality eCitation heavyweight thermal paper rolls are less expensive than their handwritten ticket counter parts. Implementing an E-Ticketing or Electronic-Citation system will have a significant up-front cost. That is true when switching from any current ‘system’ to something new. The ‘systems’ worth switching to are the ones that can reduce costs, increase efficiency and improve effectiveness.
eCitations Increase Efficiency
Generally speaking, efficiency is a good thing. The riskier a task is, the more important it is to be efficient when doing it. This is why switching to an eCitation system for your police paper is so important.
According to Mike Gambrell, who spent 30 years in law enforcement and retired as the Police Chief of Greenville, South Carolina: the two most dangerous calls for an officer to go on are a traffic stop and a domestic violence situation. Most people would agree that improving efficiency for police officers during one of the more dangerous parts of their job would be a worthwhile investment.
One of the main benefits of using eCitation papers for police paper is improving officer safety. The less time spent per traffic violation, the lower the chance of an accident happening where they could be hurt or injured.
Across the country, police departments and sheriff’s offices are switching to E-Ticketing technology. E-Citation paper systems use direct thermal printing technology to issue tickets to offenders. That means there is no ink or toner to deal with, and the only thing required for them to function properly are thermal paper rolls. Because there is no ink/toner and very few moving parts, mobile thermal printers require little maintenance and are reliable in the extreme heat/cold.
eCitation Papers Improves Effectiveness
Previously, we mentioned that high quality heavyweight thermal paper rolls are less expensive than their handwritten ticket counterparts. They can also be customized to include relevant information on the back.
Things like local ordinances and other standardized information can be custom printed on the back of each roll. This means that each ticket has relevant information specific to the city or county the ticket was issued in. Tickets also will no longer need to be thrown out because of illegibility. Any system that can reduce an error rate from 10% to 0-2% will be worth the hassle of transitioning.
In years past, it would take multiple people reading and inputting the information from handwritten tickets into a computer system.
eCitations, with the proper software, allow the information from the ticket to be automatically transferred to the computer system. Not only can this save time and money, but this process improves accuracy as well.
Manual data entry is time consuming work and is still not 100% perfect. Implementing an eCitation system will free up office staff to focus on additional work that goes into effectively running a police station or sheriff’s department.
Good record keeping is important, and there are fewer places where it is more important than police stations. Having easily accessible and searchable information is infinitely more valuable than having information that is inconsistent, illegible, and difficult to search through.
Simply put, switching from issuing manual tickets to an eCitation paper system, is one of the best decisions a police department can make. Using an eCitation system is one of the few changes a department can make that will improves effectiveness, cuts costs, and increases efficiency. And at the end of the day, isn’t that what everyone is trying to do?
Paper Rolls Plus is Your Trusted Source for eCitation Police Paper
With over 30 years of experience, Paper Rolls Plus can help your police department or sheriff’s office drastically increase efficiency and reduce costs. Our dedicated staff is committed to helping department’s all across the country get the most from their daily operations. Get in touch with us today and see first hand the difference that our team can make!