Pittsburgh City Council

Police traffic ticket books may be a thing of the past.

Written by Amy Whipple

City police need an automated system for traffic citations instead of the inefficient paper tickets it currently issues.

The Department of Public Safety requested permission from city council to use Traffic and Criminal Software (TraCS). State police will supply the sublicense at no cost to the city.

TraCS allows officers to create and transmit electronic crash reports, traffic citations and non-traffic citations from their vehicles. State police and several municipalities already use it.

Pat Fosnaught, commander of administration, said city police currently hand-write citations. Court staff members then process those citations before putting them into the state system for prosecution and for the court proceedings. He said manual input results in “a lot” of errors. The requested software does everything automatically.

Additionally, Pennsylvania passed a law last year that will require municipalities to report traffic stop data once state police have a reporting system in place. The city does not currently store that data, Fosnaught said, and TraCS will make it easier to submit those reports.

Council Member Barb Warwick of Greenfield noted that adding traffic stop data would be helpful in furthering Vision Zero efforts.

Council Member Deb Gross of Highland Park asked for assurance that the software would not aid in immigration enforcement. Director of Public Safety Lee Schmidt said the software does not share data with federal agencies.

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