That’s the Ticket, Police Say About New Device : Law enforcement: Use of a hand-held computer to research and issue traffic citations could reduce enforcement costs and help land repeat offenders.

Parking tickets in Glendale have shrunk.

But unfortunately for motorists, it’s not the fine that’s smaller; it’s the physical size of the citation.

For more than a month, Glendale parking enforcement officers have been using a new, computerized gadget to issue 2 1/4-inch-by-6-inch citations--similar in size to a Disneyland ticket.

The old citations were larger, by two inches, on both sides.

“Our people have been extremely receptive to this,” said traffic Lt. Ray Edey. “It simplifies their work. . . . It’s designed for parking officers.”

Called AutoCITE, the hand-held ticketing unit has also caught the public’s eye.

“They (passers-by) approach our people and say, ‘What is that?’ ” Edey said. “They do a double-take.”

Glendale police decided to dump the traditional way of writing parking tickets--an average of 120,000 a year--by hand after realizing the amount of staff time it took to file them and re-enter the data into a computer. In the past, officers also spent a lot of time searching through a 300-page report to find violators who have accumulated five or more unpaid parking tickets and whose vehicles can be seized.

Late last year, the Police Department spent $80,000 for the new computerized system from Tustin-based Enforcement Technology Inc. The money was taken from the department’s special projects fund, approved by the City Council in January, 1992, Edey said. Costs included installation of computer hardware and software, labor, training and 14 AutoCITE units-- at $3,000 each, he said.

Although more than 50 other California law enforcement agencies have been using the same system for years, Edey thinks the Glendale Police Department is the first to go high-tech in the Northeast Los Angeles area.

The two-pound, black, AutoCITE unit looks like a mini-accounting machine. But instead of spitting out receipts at the top end, the battery-charged machine prints out citations.

To issue a ticket, parking officers use a key pad to enter the vehicle information into the unit, which contains a memory chip that can store up to 1,000 citations. AutoCITE then checks whether the vehicle’s owner has five or more unpaid tickets. Officers can also find out how long a vehicle has been parked at a location without having to mark its tires.

“You can enter license (plate) numbers on the cars,” Edey said. “It has a timer on each car you enter.”

At the end of a shift, officers plug the unit onto an IBM computer. AutoCITE electronically transfers its data into the computer’s parking records and it recharges at the same time. No sorting or filing is needed.

“Even if the thing is crushed, you can still download the memory,” Edey said.

Another feature is that the ticket, itself, is bar-coded, similar to the way most supermarket prices are coded for easy checkout out at the cash register.

“When somebody goes to pay a citation . . . they (police) can scan it” using a bar code reader to call up the computer’s record, Edey said. “They no longer have to key the numbers in. The fewer keys that have to be pressed by people, the fewer errors we will have.”

Since AutoCITE’s debut April 6, police have issued 7,000 citations, or $175,000 in fines, Edey said.

“We usually run 7,000 to 9,000 a month,” Edey said. The reason the number has been low is that “we’re learning how to use the system. It’s a little awkward at first,” he said.

Police say the new system shines at tracking down violators who have five or more unpaid tickets--a $50 fine per citation. A total of 700 additional such scofflaws have been cited and 200 cars have been impounded--half of which belonged to the scofflaws, police said.