The Augusta County Sheriff’s Office has recently added a new and exciting capability for its traffic enforcers, electronic ticketing. With the adoption of this technology, the Augusta County Sheriff’s Office has become first county jurisdiction and the first Sheriff’s Office in the Commonwealth of Virginia to implement electronic ticketing.
E-ticketing allows deputies to use computer devices in the Patrol car to create an electronic version of the Virginia Uniform Summons. Once the deputy “runs” a subject or a vehicle on his mobile data terminal, the information received from the Department of Motor Vehicles is automatically populated into the citation, eliminating the requirement for hand-written multiple copies. The deputy then simply selects the appropriate court date and violation code on the mobile data terminal.
The deputy then saves the record and prints a hardcopy of the completed summons on a Panasonic printer that is installed in the patrol car and provides the violator with a copy of the summons and instruction sheet. Once the summons is issued, the information is electronically transmitted to the Sheriff’s Office in-house records storage system (OSSI Pistol) and to the Virginia Supreme Court, which sends the summons to the appropriate district court for subsequent adjudication. The deputy then retains the “original” copy of the summons which the violator signs for submission to the courts.
The primary advantages of e-ticketing include:
- Eliminating human error from hand-written tickets.
- Immediate population of data into the local RMS system and statewide LInX system.
- Paperless transmission of ticketing date to the courts.
- Significant time savings gained by the elimination of redundant manual data entry of citations into Pistol by services personnel.
There are currently 18 Augusta County patrol cars outfitted for e-ticketing, and the Sheriff’s Office hopes to receive additional grant funding in the future to equip the entire fleet with Mobile Data Terminals and E-ticketing.