Part I: Summary

1.1 Audit findings and opinions

1.1.1 Citations management system

Seven units of the Public Security Police Force (PSP) are responsible for issuing citations to transgressors of traffic rules and one of these seven units also takes on the overall management of the citations, which includes distributing them to the fining units and collecting the issued citations for scanning and registering the respective data in the information system. Through sampling examination, the Commission of Audit (CA) detected over 1,500 citations missing, lost or failed to be scanned. On the other hand, by examining the management procedures implemented by the central coordinating unit and two other fining units, CA verified that there were no uniform procedures among the fining units and the management applied in the central coordinating unit was relatively weak. PSP was unclear whether all the citations had been distributed, whether they were completely collected and processed appropriately, whether any tickets were missing or whether all the distributed citations have been scanned and the respective data accurately recorded in the information system.

In addition to the deficiencies of the mechanism itself, CA also found that PSP did not comply with the set out procedures, in particular: subsequent verification of copies of citations submitted by the police officers has not been systematically performed, so errors and omissions committed by police officers when filling in the “Registry of citations / ʻ15-day papers’” were not detected; cancellation of prosecution was not in accordance with the procedure defined for this purpose; and offenses committed during special operations were dismissed without written official documents. The poor management of the citations has undermined the impartial enforcement of the traffic rules.

1.1.2 Introduction of electronic citation devices

In response to the increase of traffic violations and to achieve the policy objective of “strengthen the police performance through technology”, PSP began considering the introduction of electronic citations devices in 2002, which would improve the prosecution works on traffic violations by optimizing the procedures of the frontline officers, reducing errors of handwriting and also lowering computer input errors. However, after more than 10 years, PSP has not yet completed the replacement of handwritten citations by electronic device produced citations. PSP has no documents, such as a global survey on needed units and working reports, capable of portraying the implementation process and the use of the electronic citations devices and the results achieved. Without an overall and documented plan to guide the introduction of the electronic devices, the results fell short of expected. In fact, PSP has not yet achieved the target of the aforesaid policy, which was to provide each patrolling officer of the Traffic Department with an electronic citations device and, at the same time, to as soon as possible computerize the works of fining and citing. As technological transformations take place every day, an introduction process of the electronic citations devices that take 10 years cannot be effective in timely enhancing the capacity of handling traffic violations works and procedures, which means PSP has been using public resources inefficiently and ineffectively.

1.1.3 Examination of images captured by the electronic monitoring systems

Police officers at PSP’s Traffic Department are responsible for examining the images captured by the three electronic monitoring systems covering red light jumping, speeding and illegal parking, and for deciding whether the facts shown in the images constitute traffic violation and subject to penalization. The audit found that PSP doesn’t possess a set of written and uniform examination criteria and that, in addition to relevant legal provisions and information provided by the computer system, police officers also have to rely on their personal experience to determine what acts should be prosecuted. Lacking fixed criteria would jeopardize the consistency and objectivity of judgment from the part of the frontline officers, which in turn affects and compromises the impartiality of the procedure. The police officers are not required to record the reasons why they decided not to prosecute certain cases, so the review officers were unable to ascertain whether the respective procedures have been carried out properly. The subsequent verification of prosecuted cases performed by senior officers, by random sampling, is not enough to ensure correct assessment has been made in cases the examining officers decided not to prosecute.

1.1.4 Managing the electronic monitoring systems

Transport Bureau (DSAT, according to its Portuguese initials), being the department in charge of managing the electronic monitoring systems, is responsible for carrying out relevant research and installation, maintenance and repair works in order to record traffic violations, such as red light jumping, speeding and illegal parking, and to provide PSP, the user of the systems, with images to initiate the prosecution. However, DSAT mentioned that they only focused on the normal operation of the monitoring devices and whether they are able to record images; it understands that it is not part of its duties to ensure the validity of the images for the purpose of prosecution and, therefore, the reports sent by PSP have been considered as reference only. Cross-examining all reports PSP sent to DSAT in 2012, in which the former summarized the prosecution works and the conditions of the images recorded by the monitoring systems of red light jumping and speeding, CA verified there were months in which over 80% and 50% of the respective monitoring devices recorded “no images”, and even if images were recorded, over 70% and 80% of the respective monitoring posts captured only “useless images”, i.e. no more than 20% of the recorded images have been successfully used in prosecuting the offenders; there were even devices that captured nothing throughout the year.

The findings reveal the management of the electronic monitoring systems performed by DSAT has been unsatisfactory. DSAT has been unable to meet the needs of the user, i.e. providing clear images on which PSP could determine whether a traffic violation has occurred. The current situation not only reduces the effectiveness of the resources allocated to DSAT, but also causes frontline officers to waste considerable time in analyzing the regularity of situations shown in the images, which increases the risk of omitting cases that should be prosecuted, due to human error.

1.2 Audit suggestions