Philly Cops Still Use Typewriters, Monitor Twitter on Ticker Tape

Sure, the Philadelphia Police Department offers the public a whiz-bang almost-real-time crime-mapping system, but after paying a vendor more than $7 million over the last decade, the cops themselves are still clacking away on Selectrics for large chunks of the day:

Right now, Philadelphia’s cops use typewriters to write two kinds of reports: property receipts, which must be filed when an officer takes any object off someone, and search warrants. Cops have to use typewriters for these tasks because the reports are pre-formatted and numbered to keep track of them and to protect against fake versions. The reports must be fed into the typewriter or handwritten. In simpler terms, the cops just don’t have a system to replace this one. [Technically Philly]