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Johannesburg Metropolitan Police Department (JMPD) Mobile Law Enforcement System
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Johannesburg Metropolitan Police Department (JMPD)
Mobile Law Enforcement System


Retief de Villiers
2BiG Mobile Applications (Pty.) Ltd
1
st
floor, Intaba House,
13 Sloane Street, Bryanston,
2152 South Africa
E-mail: retief.devilliers@2bigmobile.com,
http://www.2bigmobile.com

Abstract :
As part of the execution of its Vision 2030 document, the City of Johannesburg has
embarked on a zero tolerance campaign for law enforcement and traffic violations. A major
problem is the large number of open warrants of arrest and stagnated cases in the traffic fines
prosecutions database. A solution had to be developed that would make it easy for a
Metropolitan Police Officer (MPO) to execute a query on whether a motorist, that has been
stopped, has open warrants of arrest and/or stagnated cases listed against his/her name. A
solution based on GPRS equipped mobile phones was developed with an open source platform
to facilitate queries to the prosecutions database. Results so far indicate that the project has
been a success.

Keywords:
mobile solution, GPRS, open source, law enforcement, Johannesburg, South Africa.

1. Introduction

The city of Johannesburg, the largest metropolitan area in South Africa, with a population of 3,2 million
people, recently developed their Johannesburg 2030 vision for the city. The introductory section of
the Johannesburg 2030 document mentions the following: Crime, as we all know, is probably the
biggest problem we face in Johannesburg. Solving the Johannesburg crime problem is a major part of
the strategy implemented by the metropolitan council to ensure that Johannesburg will be a world class
city by 2030.

The first step in the process of tackling the crime problem is to intensify the zero-tolerance campaign
with respect to law enforcement and traffic violations by the JMPD (Johannesburg Metropolitan Police
Department). When the Traffic Department became the JMPD, it widened its focus on three aspects,
namely traffic, municipal by-laws and crime.

A major part of this campaign is to look at the closure of all outstanding warrants of arrests and
stagnated cases for traffic violations. There are more than 700 000 open warrants worth more than
R180 000 000 (about £16 000 000), in the citys prosecutions system database! A prime contributor is
the just ignore traffic offence summonses culture that developed and grew in the minds of the
Johannesburg motoring public. Up to now, insufficient staff and the lack of efficient access to the
warrants database hampered efforts to execute these warrants of arrest. In addition there are about
625 000 stagnated cases with a value of about R150 000 000 (about £13 000 000) where the summons
could not be served in the hands of the offender. Derek Masoek, Director: Operations and Programs, of
the JMPD, says the main aim of the system is not to collect money, but to change driver behaviour.

A solution was sought, that would enable a JMPD officer in the field, to quickly determine if there are
outstanding warrants of arrest or stagnated cases on record, when a motorist or vehicle is stopped on the
road.
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2. Background

The prosecutions system, containing the information on outstanding warrants of arrest and
stagnated cases, runs on an antiquated mainframe system, where the data is stored in flat files.
Multiple legacy interfaces with processing of payments and other judicial systems, as well as
complex legal processing rules embedded in this system, precludes the replacement of this system.
A solution thus had to be developed that would make use of the information in the existing
prosecutions system, while also providing open interfaces to new sub-systems (also including
management reporting).

Some basic background details about the legal process of handling traffic offences in South Africa
is necessary to understand the solution that has been developed. See the simplified process diagram
in
Figure 1
.

Offender
present
Yes
No
(camera recorded
offence)
Fine paid?
Appeared in
court?
Fine paid?
No
Successfully
served?
No
Yes
Case closed
Yes
No
Yes
Case closed
Offence
detected
Serve
Summons
Authorise
Warrant of
Arrest
Print Warrant
of Arrest
Warrant of
Arrest signed
Issue notice
Serve
Summons
Case flagged
as stagnated
Case loaded
on I
2
MS for
mobile queries

Figure 1: Offence process: Offence, Notice, Summons, Warrant of Arrest and Stagnated cases

Once a traffic offence has been detected, a summons is served on the motorist in cases where the
motorist is present. In the case of camera detected offences, a notice is issued and sent by mail.
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This notice notifies the motorist that he/she has to appear in a court on a date and time specified,
unless an admission of guilt fine is paid. If the notice is ignored (i.e. fine not paid or fail to appear
in court), a summons has to be served. The summons must be physically delivered to the motorists
address and accepted either by the accused motorist or by an adult at that address who can testify
that the motorist lives there. If this summons is ignored by the motorist (i.e. fine not paid or fail to
appear in court), a warrant of arrest is authorised, printed and signed by a magistrate. If it was not
possible to physically deliver the summons, this case is now labelled as a stagnated case. A signed
warrant of arrest can be executed by tracing the offender.

As has been described in the introduction, there was an urgent need to enable the JMPD
Metropolitan Police Officers (MPO) to efficiently collect these outstanding fines. A facility that
would enable a mobile online query function, to ascertain whether a motorist has outstanding open
warrants or stagnated cases would facilitate this process. This system must also be able to report on
suspended vehicles and report on MPO performance.

3. Technical Solution

A high level system block diagram of the system architecture is shown in Figure 2. The heart of the
solution that was developed is the Integrated Information Management System (I
2
MS). This system
enabled access to the legacy flat file systems and also enabled integration with various presentation
layers and user interfaces.

An MPO can now, through the simple entry into a mobile phone of a motor vehicle registration number
or motorist identity number get immediate feedback on whether the motorist, or vehicle owner, has open
warrants or stagnated cases logged in the prosecutions system. The entry process on the mobile phone is
done through the use of a WAP interface. In both cases the GPRS data channel in the mobile network is
utilised for the data communication. In the near future, automated number plate reading systems will be
integrated with the system enabling an efficient filtering mechanism to pick those cars whose owners
have been involved in offences.

When a query results in a response indicating that there are open warrants or stagnated cases listed
against the vehicle owner (and the owner is present) or motorist, an arrest could be made. At the
moment this process of executing an arrest is dependant on being able to produce a physical signed
paper warrant from the court with jurisdiction over that area. In the future this will be made much more
efficient with electronic processing of scanned warrants of arrest (see Figure 2). The fact that an arrest
has been made is indicated as such on the mobile device to be logged on the system. If an arrest is not
made, the MPO must indicate the reason by selecting an appropriate outcome code on the mobile phone.

After roll-out of the next phase of the system, the motorist will be able to pay the amounts outstanding
through a mobile payment terminal, equipped with credit card processing facilities, using the GPRS data
channel for online queries and authorisation from the banking systems. Payments are also possible at
retail payment centres (e.g. local retail stores, bank ATMs and cash kiosks) as well as through a secure
web site.

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Figure 2: JMPD Mobile Law Enforcement System System Block diagram

An important issue that has to be addressed, from a legal point of view is being able to prove to the
motorist, unequivocally, that a physical warrant of arrest, with a judges signature exists and is on file.
This will be addressed through a scanning process through which digital images of warrants will be
stored in the I
2
MS and be available for display by the MPO on a display device.

The solution that was developed for the JMPD was completely based on Open Source Software. A
stable platform with the accompanying tools was thus available for the development team without any
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of the usual licensing costs associated with proprietary software solutions. The solution has been
devel