The Circuit Court clerks of six area counties are debuting a new software system that will allow police officers to fill out traffic tickets electronically in their squad cars, cutting the time of traffic stops nearly in half.

The system, which will be available to law enforcement agencies in Cook, DeKalb, DuPage, Kane, McHenry and Will counties, will cut down on the time it takes police officers to write tickets and will allow the information to be transmitted electronically to the clerks’ offices.

The clerks showed off the new technology at news conference Tuesday at the Naperville Police Department. Chris Kachiroubas of DuPage, Dorothy Brown of Cook, Deborah Seyller of Kane, Pam McGuire of Will and Maureen Josh of DeKalb spoke at the event.

“These e-citations will eliminate legibility issues, reduce the amount of paper (and) improve the accuracy of court records while saving time and costs associated with the current process of paper tickets,” Kachiroubas said.

The average traffic stop takes about 10 minutes, and most of that time is spent writing out tickets by hand, the clerks said. With the new system, that time has been reduced to about six minutes.

DuPage County paid about $2.3 million to make the software available to its police departments. Cook County paid about $800,000, and Kane County paid about $675,000.

Funding for the software came through a fee charged to file documents with the clerks’ offices.

Bill Maio, chief compliance officer for the DuPage clerk’s office, said the county’s price tag was higher for the program because it purchased an unlimited number of licenses and paid for the capability of issuing tickets for state violations, local-ordinance violations, overweight trucks and parking violations as well as towing slips.

Other counties, such as Cook, only purchased the program for state violations, Maio said.

While the clerks’ offices have paid for the necessary software, police departments that want to implement the system will have to purchase ticket printers for their vehicles. The printers cost about $600 to $800, officials said.

Brown said that because Cook County is home to one of the largest unified court systems in the world, the new electronic ticketing system will ensure more efficient and cost-effective handling of traffic citations.

“The electronic ticketing form program will afford law enforcement officers to efficiently handle their traffic stops and issuing the traffic ticket,” Brown said. “The ticket data, an image of the ticket and the paper ticket will be sent to the clerk’s office for filing and updating our records. This program will allow the clerk’s office to receive the highest data quality possible and reduce the opportunity for bad data from handwriting, reading and data entry.”

Cutting down on the time of traffic stops will help reduce the risk of accidents for officers stopped on the side of roadways, officials said.

Wood Dale officer Larry Brosch said an officer from his department has been off the job for more than a year because a semi-truck hit his squad car while he was writing a ticket.

“It is a big safety issue being on the side of the road,” he said. “It’s safer for both the motorist and the officer to be off the side of the road more quickly.”

Kachiroubas said about half of the police departments in DuPage County are in some stage of implementing the program.