E-Ticketing Program Approved for Fort Lee Police Department

The Fort Lee Mayor and Council approved a resolution Thursday awarding a contract to GTBM Inc. of East Rutherford that essentially clears the way for a permanent electronic ticketing system for the . The decision comes after testing the program over the past several months, installing e-ticket readers, software and printers in four police cars, and borough, police and municipal court officials expect the e-ticketing system to make issuing tickets for traffic violations safer for police officers, faster for both officers and motorists and more efficient for the courts to process and violators to pay.

“What this does is it allows us to do everything electronically,” said Fort Lee Councilman Jan Goldberg, who was instrumental in pushing the program forward. “It increases productivity by the police. It’s also safer for them because they spend less time at a car stop. A police officer now, who writes a ticket, is going to be spending less time with the vehicle and with the person he pulls over. So it’s safer for them also. It’s really a win-win for everybody.”

Goldberg added that hundreds of tickets were issued during the demonstration project started in June, and errors were “miniscule.”

“The error factor was so small,” he said. “I think they wrote over 600 tickets, and there were maybe five to 10 errors.”

Calling the program “an enhancement” for the police department and the courts, Goldberg said. “We believe it will save personnel, and we will also save time in the courts. The judge wrote a letter [Thursday] supporting it. The police support it. The municipal courts support it … everybody loves it.”

The program computerizes the ticket process. Instead of a police officer manually writing a ticket, he or she scans the driver’s license barcode on a portable reader, and all of the driver’s demographic information appears; the officer then picks from a dropdown menu the appropriate violation or violations, hits print and hands a computer printout of the summons to the motorist.

The system is integrated with the state Motor Vehicle Commission, feeding the ticket information in real-time.

“So theoretically, somebody who gets a ticket can get to the municipal court and pay the ticket within 20 minutes,” Goldberg said.

The resolution passed Thursday provides for the purchase of 40 licenses—enough for essentially the entire fleet of patrol and traffic cars and even some handheld devices for motorcycle patrolmen, according to Goldberg—from the company that already provides the Fort Lee Police Department with its Info-Cop technology, at a total cost of $52,850, which Goldberg said will come from forfeiture funds.

“So it’s not costing the borough a dime,” Goldberg said. “The [Fort Lee Police Chief] agreed to it a while ago. From what the chief told me, he actually had [the forfeiture funds] waiting for our approval to get it started.”

Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich said the program is not intended to increase the amount of tickets the police department issues, but rather to “increase the productivity of the police officers.”

“We also cut down on the required manpower now to handle those summonses by the police department here in town,” Sokolich said.

Goldberg wasn’t able to offer an estimate on how long it would take to purchase and install the necessary hardware, but he said he hoped to see it well underway by the end of the year.

“It’ll be done over a period of time,” he said.