Algood Police Department beginning to implement its new e-citation program.
Chief Dale Armour said the program will allow officers to scan and print citations from their vehicles. He said so far, it has helped officers cut their traffic stop time in half. Armour said the e-citation program will also be beneficial to the city itself.
“So by the time you handwrite a citation and it gets turned in, that information is transferred over into a typed format and there’s room for error there,” Armour said. “this right here gets all the same data and it just keeps transferring from one spot to the other.”
Armour said the program can be used to issue all citations, including city court and general sessions. He said the software itself is free to the city, with the department having to pay about $1,000 per patrol unit. Armour said that funding will come both from grant funding and the police department’s budget.
Armour said citizens should not see too much of a difference when it comes to citations.
“The only thing they might see that’s different is that we use the non-carbon copy paper so by the time you get to the fourth or fifth page, it does print that well,” Armour said. “We can print out as many copies as we need, the violator will get a copy, they’ll sign it just like they always have, it will go into the system.”
Armour said the software had been previously approved by the city several months ago.
