What types of apps or technology does Florida Highway Patrol use to ticket drivers?
Answer: Some of the troopers have CB radios still. There’s a whole division within the Florida Highway Patrol called the Department of Transportation Division. Those troopers primarily will pull over commercial drivers, those with commercial licenses. So it’s not uncommon to have them listen to the communication between the truckers so they can find out who might be speeding above the speed limit, so they kind of do a little bit of sneakiness, if you will. In addition, every highway patrol car now has laptops. All the troopers are issued laptops—basically it is their working office. They take these cars home with them every night. So, the time that they turn the car on, the laptops come on, and every single citation that’s issued by the highway patrol is digital. It’s all printed out on a thermal paper or some white paper, and they have printers in their car. So you’ll be stopped by a police officer, and you’ll literally, after they run your license to determine whether it’s foul or not, that traffic stop could be over within five minutes—it’s very quick. In addition, the highway patrol was given a grant probably four years ago to purchase in-car video cameras. They don’t use body cams, the highway patrol, but the troopers do have in-car videos, and that will oftentimes be recorded—the interaction between the driver and the trooper—it will be recorded on these Panasonic cameras which they then transmit back to the station. It automatically gets uploaded, and we often get those as we prepare our legal defenses.
