WA Police move into the new age with electronic infringements

• Roll out of electronic traffic infringements to begin this month
• Part of the McGowan Government's digital transformation of the WA Police Force
  

After more than half a century of handwriting traffic infringements, police will do away with their carbon copy pads and pencils and move to electronic infringement capability.

 

Since the 1970s, officers have handwritten traffic infringement notices on carbonated P140 General Infringement Notice books.

 

After issuing an infringement at the roadside, officers had to further

submit a copy once they returned to the base so it could be manually uploaded to a central infringement processing system.

 

Currently this occurs for up to 180,000 handwritten traffic infringement notices per year.

 

From this month, police will introduce the electronic traffic infringement application on their personal mobile devices.

 

This will allow an officer to retrieve person and vehicle data from their mobile devices and populate the required fields on the electronic infringement notice.

 

The roll out of electronic infringements will bring Western Australia into line with other jurisdictions including Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland and Tasmania, who all have electronic infringement notice capability.

 

Motorists will continue to receive their infringements in the mail and will still have 28 days to pay.

 

The McGowan Government has invested more than $40 million in digital policing initiatives including the roll out of personal mobile devices, body-worn cameras, automatic number plate recognition cameras and drones.

 

Comments attributed to Police and Road Safety Minister Paul Papalia:

 

"This is a giant step forward in policing and will result in significant efficiencies.

 

"It will mean less time spent completing administrative tasks and allow officers to spend more time policing the streets and the community.

 

"It's hard to imagine in this day and age our police were still using the archaic manual process of handwriting infringements.

 

"This is one of a suite of digital initiatives the McGowan Government is funding to bring our Police Force into the 21st century."

 

Minister's office - 6552 5600