RICHLAND HILLS -
In Richland Hills, officers carry a sleek,
palm-size wireless computer to issue tickets quickly and
save time.
The touch-screen Pocket PC
has cut the length of traffic stops by about 10 minutes,
traffic officer Jason Baxter said.
"I can do just about
everything at the window of the violator's car," he said.
Officers swipe a driver's
license through a card reader attached to the bottom of the
hand-held device, and the motorist's information appears on
the screen. The officer chooses the correct citation from
options on a pull-down menu, the violator signs the ticket
on the touch screen, and a ticket prints from a small
printer stored in the patrol car.
Within minutes, drivers are
on their way and officers are back on patrol.
But it's what comes next
that really cuts down on manual labor for the city, Police
Chief Barbara Childress said. The $24,952
MobileCite
system, which includes five hand-held iPAQ Pocket PCs, is
paperless except for the waterproof tickets issued to
violators.
Officers can head back to
the Police Department and upload up to 400 citations as well
as racial profiling data into the department's computer from
anywhere in the building.
"The only time I plug it in
is to charge it," Baxter said.
The information is then
downloaded into the records department computers and is
instantly accessible by the courts, Childress said.
Richland Hills abandoned
handwritten tickets in 2001. At first, officers used thick,
black hand-held computers with confusing keyboards. Tickets
were difficult to load into the internal printer and the
courts still needed to pick up paper tickets, Childress
said.
"It's an easier system
to process. That's part of the advantages of using it,"
Childress said. "We like the added feature of analyzing our
racial profiling data. You capture the information,
and it's formatted to gather what you need to give the
state."
Within a month, the
department expects to be able to access information about
stolen vehicles, warrants and other records, Cmdr. George
Worledge said.
"You can run the vehicle,
the person or any articles that might be seen in the car,"
he said.
If a hand-held device
breaks, the information inside the computer can be salvaged
by extracting the memory card inside.
Keller also uses the
MobileCite
program to skip the paper shuffling, Lt. Tommy Williams
said. Four hand-held computers are shared by traffic
officers.
"You don't have to worry
about losing a piece of paper," Williams said. "It's easy."
