THE Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) on Thursday received a boost to its traffic ticketing system with the acquisition of more than 750 hand-held electronic machines, which Commissioner of Police Major General Antony Anderson said will cause 10 times greater efficiency when issuing tickets.

Anderson was speaking during Thursday’s handing-over ceremony at the Office of the Police Commissioner in St Andrew, where he said that he expects to see an increase in the number of tickets issued to motorists. With this expected increase, the commissioner made it clear that it is not a ploy to boost revenue but to ensure order on the nation’s streets.

“This whole business of electronic ticketing is the way forward for the JCF. Last year we issued 720,000 tickets. That was up from 500,000 year on year. Before today, we started testing 70 of the new devices. Those 70 devices accounted for 70,000 tickets. We now have 750. The math is quite interesting, but the message is that we have laws and rules and you need to abide by them. I expect we may see increases in the number of tickets until we see a decrease. The decrease will come about when people start abiding to rules.”

“An officer is probably 10 times more efficient in terms of writing a ticket with this system and if you were already in the system for a previous ticket, it is even faster to give you the other one. We are not in search of revenue through ticketing. We are in search of better public order and better traffic management. That is what we want. There are a significant number of devices being added to the system and there is a lot of information at the fingertips of our officers to better keep people safe and all road users safe from harm.”

According to the commissioner, there are more than one million registered motor vehicles in Jamaica and with a figure like that the need to uphold order is very high.

“Anyone travelling on the roads now will see that there is a lot of traffic and the traffic doesn’t just stay there for 8:00 am then disappears. At 10:00 am there is another traffic jam. At 3:00 pm there is another traffic jam. With over one million vehicles on the road, it means that quite often, they are going to try and get somewhere at the same time and that creates a problem.

“Patience, obeying the lights, not blocking intersections and assisting each other to get through this will make everybody’s life better. Everybody has somewhere to go, but once we all try to go before the other person, then we all end up with chaos and all of us spend longer on the roads. We will be out there as a police force, using these new technologies to more efficiently and effectively regulate what is going on and so my recommendation is, do not do the things to get the tickets,” he said.