La Voz

Issue date: 2/23/09 Section: News

Media Credit: Soheil Rezaee Police student assistant Chris Carley shows the printer (left) and 9900 Mobile Computer used to create parking tickets. These hand held devices allow tickets to be printed on site.

Media Credit: Soheil Rezaee A campus police officer reviews a 9900 Mobile Computer unit which replaced hand-written tickets this quarter. The new system approximately cost the department $71,000.

De Anza police officers may not have known that text-messaging skills could come in handy when citing violations. They do now.

At the beginning of the winter quarter, the Foothill-De Anza campus police began using the 9900 Mobile Computer, a hand-held ticketing machine by Honeywell Dolphin, to create and print tickets at the moment of giving a citation.

The police student assistants and community service officers say the machines are simple, easy to use and more efficient.

The 9900 Mobile Computer is a small device with a detached printer that has the ability to print tickets. Police say one downfall of the device is that the ticket is not printed from the machine itself.

"Converting the entire parking staff to hand-held units has been a desire of mine since becoming chief in 2004," said Ron Levine, chief of police. "I thought the conversion would be cost effective and a boost to staff productivity."

Before the new system, De Anza and Foothill were using two different methods for handing out tickets. Foothill used hand-held computers for parking enforcement, while De Anza used paper citations.

According to Levine, it costs the district less to process electronic citations than paper citations; the hand-held units have built-in GPS support and a built-in camera. Using the hand-held units also eliminates problems with legibility of information entered on the citations.

The ticket books used by De Anza consisted of 25 tickets, which were turned into the administrative office once they were full. They were then processed, inventoried and logged in, and the information was entered into computer systems. This process proved to be time consuming and inefficient, said Levine.

After evaluating both methods, the department concluded that the 9900 Mobile Computer was more efficient. The new units with printers, holsters and training cost approximately $71,000. However, the new units will save the department money by reducing overtime pay.

Prior to selecting the 9900 Mobile Computer, several varieties of units were reviewed to see if they met the department's requirements. The unit fulfilled the specifications including ruggedness, ability to withstand a "drop" test (dropped from a specified height to a solid surface), options (e.g. integrated GPS, camera, bar-code reader) and warranty/repair support.

As productivity and a decrease in cost have been a goal of Levine's, the switch to the hand held machines are working well as part of this strategy, he said.

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