Utah Highway Patrol (UHP) officers were handwriting DUI reports. In turn, the handwritten reports needed to be typed. However, the handwritten reports were difficult to read, sometimes illegible, and this caused delays.

Since handwritten reports require a lot of time to complete, some officers were spending 30-35 percent of their time in the office completing reports. In other cases, the reports were too brief to be useful. The officer who had the most arrests was "rewarded" by having the most paperwork. Much of the paperwork was done on overtime or at home with no additional pay.

GOALS AND OBJECTIVES

The project had several objectives:

• To motivate the DUI troopers to make more DUI arrests by making report-writing easier and quicker
• To increase the number of hours a trooper is on the road, thus increasing the number of arrests
• To increase the efficiency of the paper work flow
• To expedite report completion so that a trooper is not backlogged when making several DUI arrests in one shift.

STRATEGIES AND ACTIVITIES

The project was called Campaign Safe and Sober. A process was developed whereby troopers would dictate their arrest report over the phone, either at the jail or by cellular phone, office phone or home phone. The system would recognize the trooper by a password-protected identification number. The UHP training secretary would do all the transcription. The secretary would maintain a central file for the DUI squad, accessible during regular business hours. The DUI squad was required by law to review the paperwork and sign it in front of a notary public present in the office.

Freeway Watch, a citizen group, solicited the donation of a digital dictation system from two local businesses for use in the one-year statewide pilot project. An area cellular phone company donated seven new cellular phones, adapters and free air time for one year in support of the project.

RESULTS

The average DUI report now takes four to eight minutes to dictate. By dictating immediately, report accuracy has improved. Because dictation is so much faster than handwriting, reports now include all details and necessary information.

The one-year pilot project of Campaign Safe and Sober was a huge success. Due to the extra time made available by use of the digital dictation equipment, UHP DUI troopers arrested just over 1200 impaired drivers, an average of 100 DUI arrests per month with a trooper average of 168.67 arrests during the year of the project. Additionally, the DUI troopers detected seat belt and other traffic violations, served felony and misdemeanor warrants, recovered stolen vehicles, and made felony and misdemeanor drug arrests. They also provided saturation patrols on special celebrations around the state.

Based on 40 reports per month per trooper, time savings were estimated to be $62,000. As important as the cost savings, however, were the timeliness, accuracy, legibility and availability of the paperwork generated by the DUI troopers. As a result, at the end of the pilot project the Utah legislature allocated funds for the permanent continuation of the dictation system. The program is now self-sufficient.