Salem Police Testing New Electronic Traffic Ticket System

In an effort to increase efficiency and make record keeping more accurate, the Salem Police Department is testing a new eTicket system that is already being used by the New Hampshire State Police.

Also testing out the system are both the Windham and Pelham Police Departments.

As it currently works for state police, a traffic ticket is issued from the trooper's cruiser and then automatically transmits the data to the Department of Safety and Division of Motor Vehicles (DMV). Information is then sent electronically to the Judicial Branch case management system.

Commissioner John J. Barthelmes of the N.H. Department of Safety issued a statement on the new system:

This collaborative effort by the Department's Division of State Police, Motor Vehicles, staff from the Department of Information Technology and the Judicial Branch is a great example of what can be accomplished by working together toward a shared goal that ultimately will benefit everyone in the criminal justice system, and the citizens of the State of New Hampshire.

State police have used the eTicket system for the past year. Implementing the system in the local departments will be the first step toward establishing a central data bank that would include eTicketing to more than 200 local departments currently issuing traffic tickets manually.

Once testing is complete in Salem, Windham and Pelham, eTicketing will be spread to 140 local law enforcement agencies in N.H., with the ultimate goal to spread the technology to all law enforcement agencies in the state.

Currently, the state's Circuit Courts are handling 54,000 tickets for traffic violations annually. With the eTicket system, court staff will no longer need to re-enter data from paper tickets into the court's case management system.

Salem Police made 13,773 motor vehicle stops in 2012, 1,688 of which led to court summonses.

According to Edwin W. Kelly, the Administrative Judge of the Circuit Court, the effort will reduce mistakes.

"Every effort made to streamline the data collection process, so that information is entered once into a shared system decreases the potential for errors and creates efficiencies that allow our court staff more time to process cases and serve the public," he said. "Our collaboration with the Department of Safety is essential to reaching that goal."

State agencies and the courts have the ability to share information electronically, even on different computer systems, through the development of the Justice-One Network Environment, or J-ONE.

The project is a collaborative effort of the N.H. Department of Safety, the N.H. Judicial Branch, the N.H. Attorney General's office and other state, county and local agencies.