Recently recognized as a Bright Idea by Harvard Kennedy School’s Ash Center, JTAC’s electronic Citation and Warning System (eCWS) is improving and expanding.
Incorporating enhancement requests from law enforcement agencies that use the e-Ticket system, JTAC enhanced the software and deployed the upgrade (version 2.1.5) to over 140 law enforcement agencies throughout Indiana. Additionally, over 30 new agencies have been trained to use the new software, moving the total number of agencies using eCWS to over 170 agencies. Five more agencies are scheduled for training in the coming months and over 25 agencies are in the early planning stages.
Some of the new software enhancements include:
- Night Mode: Officers can switch to a dark background laptop computer screen to reduce eye-strain during late night shifts.
- Violation Code Search: Officers can search for offense codes by keywords or code number.
- Multiple Easy Ticket Templates: Officers can create an unlimited number of templates to use in various situations and are no longer limited to one easy ticket preference. For example, officers can create a template for work zone areas, OPO Projects, Seatbelt Enforcement, etc.
- Unlimited Violations/Warnings: Officers are no longer limited to four offenses per ticket. This will ensure that one court case is created per traffic stop regardless of the number of offenses cited to the violator.
- Auto-Populate Previous Offender/Vehicle/Court: Officers now have the ability to use offender, vehicle and court information from previously written tickets.
- GIS Mapping: Officers now have the ability to capture the exact location of each traffic stop, including longitude and latitude. The location is then stored in the e-Ticket Central Repository, giving the agency the means to analyze ticket data by location. Having this information at their fingertips will give officers the ability to increase traffic enforcement in problem areas of their jurisdictions.
- Reporting Functionality: This new feature of the Central Repository will give agencies the ability to analyze multiple variables of ticket data. This will provide them with the necessary tools to implement future safety measures that will help reduce unsafe driving behavior.
More than 2.5 million tickets’ records have already been created using eCWS. JTAC has electronically filed over 220,000 cases to the Indiana Supreme Court’s case management system “Odyssey.” In addition, more than 85,000 cases have been electronically filed to other court case management systems in Indiana.
JTAC’s successful development of eCWS and subsequent ability to share information with Odyssey and other court and prosecutor case management systems has resulted in remarkable time savings, as ticket data is being electronically transferred to the prosecutors’ offices and courts without the need for paper files and repetitious retyping.
