To prevent police officers from fixing traffic tickets, New York City has come up with a system in which new tickets are electronically scanned at each stage of their journey and electronic bar codes intended to detect diversions, reports the New York Times. “If there is a summons that is missing, at any time, there is an investigation,” and the Internal Affairs Bureau, which investigates police misconduct, is notified, said Deputy Inspector Kim Royster.
“Once it gets into the system, it would be very hard to fix it, get rid of it, because it's just — it's too easy to track,” said Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Under the old system, it was possible to discern a ticket's disappearance, but that would require a more painstaking reconstruction. Once the old forms were distributed, someone in each station house was responsible for manually tallying which summons numbers went to which officers.