Police to Receive $11k Equipment Upgrade

The Sierra Madre Police Department issues about 3,200 parking citations a year, and soon they won’t be manually written out anymore.

The City Council unanimously approved an $11,000 upgrade to electronic ticket writers. Of that, about $2,000 will go toward three devices and about $9,000 will go to set up and processing. The money will come from a COPS grant received by the city.

With the upgrade comes an added bonus for residents- they'll be able to obtain annual parking permits and temporary overnight parking permits online. Parking tickets will still be able to be paid online, too.

“We’re still going to be issuing the same amount of tickets, it’ll just be quicker,” said Captain Larry Giannone at Tuesday’s City Council meeting. “The real cost-saving comes in the processing… [and] from the labor standpoint after the fact. It will be more efficient and get officers back on patrol faster.”

The estimated savings is $4,480, according to City Staff reports.

The technology has been around for about 15 years. The ticket writers look like small hand-held computers, and have violations pre-downloaded onto them, said Chief Marilyn Diaz Tuesday. Officers will be able to punch in a license plate number, choose a violation and hit print. There are also pre-loaded alerts on wanted vehicles, and a built-in camera. At the end of an officer’s shift, the devices are placed in a docking port and all of the ticket information is downloaded for processing.

The new technology will be rolled out in phases:

• Online Permits will be live by the end of February 2012
• Administrative Citation Processing will be live by the end of March 2012
• Parking Citation Processing will be live by the end of April 2012

For 10 years Sierra Madre has contracted the City of Inglewood for parking citation management. Now, they will be using Phoenix Group Information Systems.