REGINA – RCMP in Saskatchewan are using new electronic ticketing equipment to cut down on the amount of time and money spent on processing traffic offences.
A pilot project is underway that allows officers to use in-car consoles and printers to scan drivers’ licenses, digitally record the fine information and print the ticket on the spot.
Fine information is then uploaded to the Ministry of Justice’s fine collections branch on a nightly basis.
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More than 90 RCMP cruisers across Saskatchewan will be outfitted with the equipment by the time the pilot project wraps up at the end of January 2014.
The ministry says it will make the e-ticketing program available to municipal police agencies once the pilot project is complete.
Mounties used to write tickets by hand, manually record them once they returned to their detachment and mail copies to the Ministry of Justice to be processed.
“This significantly reduces the amount of time and taxpayer money spent on issuing, printing and processing minor traffic offences,” Justice Minister and Attorney General Gordon Wyant said in a news release Monday.
“In the long run, this type of technology allows police forces to spend less time on traffic fines and focus more on serious criminal offences.”
The RCMP issued roughly 49,000 tickets in 2012. The total number of tickets processed for all Saskatchewan police agencies in 2012 was 145,000.
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