What is E-Chalking (Virtual Chalking)?
- Virtual chalking, or e-chalking is an electronic process that mirrors how an officer would manually chalk a vehicle's tire, in order to see how long they have been parked
- Virtual chalking creates a Time-Stamped image, of both the license plate & the entire car, in order to track how long they've been parked
- Virtual chalking provides an image that can be attached to the violation and is acceptable in a court-of-law, provided the date/time stamp is visible & clear.
- When LPR software is capturing plates, officers can simply click "Virtual Chalk" to create/save the image
Note:
If a manual plate entry is performed, then an image must be captured manually to be added in the vehicles information/violation.
The image that exists in the system from a chalk is part of the violation, unless the patrol officer deletes the image.
When issuing a violation, the handheld devic will use the image as the first image for this violation. At that time, a patrol officer can take additional photos should it be necessary.
The Time Stamp shows the date & time that the image was taken, in the bottom right-hand corner of the image.
- Effectively, the chalk image has a stamp of the time/date the vehicle was first chalked on file
- This time-stamp can be used later as a reference picture to determine whether or not a violation should be issued
- If a violation is issued, the chalk image becomes one of the first images associated with this violation
- The image is stored, UNLESS the patrol officer deletes the image.