Suburban Chicago county begins e-warrant program

NEWSWIRE: Jan. 5, 2017.

DATELINE: Woodstock, Ill.

The Illinois state attorney for McHenry County will implement a new process for the digital creation and approval of search warrant affidavits, streamlining that process and removing the need for law enforcement officers to travel to the county’s courthouse to have them signed.

McHenry County, one of the “Collar Counties” surrounding Chicago in northeastern Illinois, is the state’s sixth-most populous county. The software it is using was developed in DuPage County, another suburban Chicago county, by the clerk of court’s information technology division there.

The new process takes effect Jan. 9 and allows a law enforcement officer to create a search warrant affidavit, send it electronically to a judge, interact with that judge via video conference, and for the judge to sign and authorize the warrant and transmit it back to the officer to be executed.

“The technology being deployed is going to save law enforcement an enormous amount of time and taxpayer money spent coming to and from the courthouse for a judge’s approval and signature on a warrant,” Patrick Kenneally, the McHenry County state’s attorney, said in a statement.

Other U.S. counties have recently implemented electronic warrant programs, including Hillsborough County, Fla. (on a pilot basis) in August; and Camden County, Ga. in 2015, where it was credited with saving “countless gallons of gasoline,” and comparable time in serving and executing warrants. Rural counties in particular have seen success with electronic warrant programs.

The full article can be read here.