WHEAT RIDGE, Colo. — It's out with the old and in with new when it comes to ticketing technology at the Wheat Ridge Police Department.
"All I do is traffic all day," said Officer Cody Mitchell with the Crash and Traffic Team. "All I do is investigate traffic accidents and traffic stops."
Until recently, officers were still writing every traffic ticket by hand.
"When I write stuff, it looks like I picked up the pen with my feet to write it," Mitchell said jokingly.
According to Mitchell, it can also take 15 to 20 minutes to copy the information from a driver's license and registration onto the paper ticket, all while pulled over on the side of busy roads.
"The highway is scary. A lot of people don't like to be up on the highway, including officers," he said. "Just sitting on the shoulder and these cars are flying by you."
With the help of a new app and mobile printer, a basic traffic stop takes about a quarter of the time it did before.
"I can actually grab a driver's license, scan it using the camera of my phone, and once I scan it, it will pre-fill all that information automatically," said Mitchell.
The department is one of the busiest in the Denver metro area.
"Wheat Ridge is becoming more and more of a cut through community," said police department spokesman Alex Rose of the fact that parts of I-70, Sheridan and Kipling all run through the city.
The extra time saved is expected to be used to prevent the next traffic issue or respond to a different call more quickly.
"It is always going call, to call, to call for our officers. So with that added time, we can pivot to the next situation that needs our attention. Or we can go out and we can do proactive police work in the community. We can walk our beats. We can make relationships with businesses and with stakeholders," said Rose.
WRPD currently has 26 printers. The Traffic Team has 5, Community Services officers have 4, and 17 were assigned to patrol officers. According to the department, the cost of the cameras were approved and budgeted for by the city years ago. The up-front cost of the app and printers was $15,000 with a nearly $54,000 per year service charge.
Rose said it's believed that WRPD will make up that money with the time saved by officers every year.
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