Police to Go to Electronic Tickets

The Township Council is expected to vote tonight on a proposed shared-services agreement that would allow the police department to begin an electronic ticketing program.

The program initially would see eight patrol cruisers outfitted with the e-ticketing hardware, Police Chief W. Harry Earle said.

E-ticketing would result in "saving on cost in a variety of fashions, including, of course, the cost of the ticket books, the efficiency of the officer and even the efficiency of the court," the chief told Council last Monday.

Patrol officers would be able to swipe traffic scofflaws' driver's licenses into the new e-ticketing devices, which are equipped to automatically generate tickets and input the pertinent driver and violation information into the municipal court's computer system.

The shared-services agreement would result in several other municipalities—Bellmawr, Magnolia, Oaklyn, Pine Hill and Runnemede—sharing in the $9,100 start-up cost.

The equipment police from all towns ultimately entering the shared-services agreement would use to send and retrieve drivers' information from the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission would be housed in the township.

Officials from a few other towns have expressed interest in joining the e-ticketing program, Earle said. Each town's share of the start-up cost would drop should another town or two join the agreement.

As the agreement stood on Thursday, the pilot program will cost the township a total of $14,000, Earle said. That money would come from the police department's capital budget.

Councilman Dan Hutchison supported the e-ticketing program during a discussion Monday night about the potential impact of proposed pay-to-pay legislation on shared-services agreements.

"We have someone sitting at a terminal, keying in every ticket that is issued by each police officer in this town," Hutchison said. "How many employee hours are spent (entering ticket information) in one of the largest municipalities in the state?"

Earle is hopeful the e-ticketing program will be expanded to include all patrol cruisers as soon as 2012.