Eatontown Police Looking To Move to E-Ticketing System

By Christopher Sheldon

The Eatontown Police are looking to make a technology upgrade by moving to an e-ticketing system.

"It eliminates human error, it saves time and it increases efficiency," Eatontown Police Chief Michael Goldfarb said during the Wednesday night Eatontown Council meeting.

E-ticketing is an electronic system for issuing summonses and eliminates the need for traditional handwritten tickets.

An officer would take a drivers license, scan its barcode into laptop computer systems that are in police cruisers and the system would automatically populate the fields on the ticket.

Goldfarb said a handwritten summons must be delivered to municipal court and that the court has to enter the information back into a computer system before it gets docketed for court. The e-ticketing system automatically links with the court's computer system and the police's dispatching and record-keeping technology.

Goldfarb said the system will cost between $50,000 to $70,000 and that the department can save between $110,000 to $130,000 over the next five years by investing in the new technology.

"With our shared (court) services agreement with Tinton Falls, if we were to move to this technology, we are given a discount of $5,000 a year, because Tinton Falls currently uses the same system," he said. 

The technology would be purchased using Cable Television Franchise funds, an $87,000 grant the borough has already received from Comcast.

Councilwoman Janice Kroposky said she felt purchasing the system would benefit the police department

"I think that it's important for the police department to use current technology, I think it makes sense if Tinton Falls and the State Police are using the system and we are entering into a shared services agreement with their court that we get on board with that same type of technology," Kroposky said.

Goldfarb said the police department will have to go through a bid process to purchase the system and that the department is finalizing the bid specs now.

The council will vote on a resolution during its next meeting to allow the department to go out to bid.