Streamlining the eWarrant Process from Start to Finish

When enforcing the law, digital technologies help officers spend more time in the field, better support the community, enhance the workforce experience, and improve compliance. 

In our recent webinar, Greg Gorek, Chief of Police of Haines City, Florida, shares the overall challenges he faced with traditional warrant processes. Previously, the warrant process required a judge’s physical (ink and paper) signature—often after hours—and took at least two hours to complete, assuming no errors or rework. By digitizing the warrant experience, enforcement agencies can effectively reduce delays, increase appropriate visibility, obtain faster approvals, and ensure compliance.

Gorek also explains how utilizing Docusign solutions helps his department streamline the overall warrant process and discusses his department’s ongoing success. By digitizing the warrant experience, enforcement agencies can effectively reduce delays, increase appropriate visibility, obtain faster approvals, and ensure compliance.

eWarrants in action in Haines City, Florida

Serving a diverse population of approximately 33,000, the Haines City Police Department is a leading law enforcement organization committed to providing a safe city for residents and visitors so they may experience an enhanced quality of life.

The department started working with Docusign when Chief Gorek spearheaded the effort to streamline its entire warrant process. This involved getting stakeholder buy-in— from the state attorney’s office to the judiciary and the clerk’s office—resulting in the creation of a workflow that has expanded beyond search warrants to include any type of document that goes through the court system.

The new workflow consolidates 27 different search warrants to create a uniform search warrant template for all law enforcement agencies in the judicial circuit. By creating signing groups, the eWarrants are digitally routed to only the on-call judge, speeding up the entire process from hours to minutes.

“Everything is paperless,” said Chief Gorek. “The only process that requires us to print out any paper is when we leave a copy of a warrant when we serve it. If you have a cellular or laptop connected to the internet, you have all the technology you need to run Docusign as your tool for doing electronic warrant service.”

Streamlining the warrant process

Digitizing the warrant process eliminates the need for officers to travel to a courthouse or judge’s home to obtain signatures and makes it easier to upload the information directly into existing Report Management Systems (RMS) and Evidence Management Systems (EMS).

When transforming this process with the Docusign platform, police departments can achieve  the following potential outcomes:

Shorten the review cycle per warrant

• Reduces risk of errors

• Eliminates unnecessary rework

• Improves collaboration between officers and judges by streamlining communications

Time saved and reallocated to serve constituents

• Expedited form processing requires less staff and less time

• Standardized processes help to gain more efficiencies

• Frees up costly resources to focus on public safety and mission-critical tasks

Streamline the warrant execution process

• Reduces manual tasks, such as printing, scanning, and sending documents.

• Eliminates warrant backlogs

• Improves overall turnaround time

Docusign helps police departments advance their public safety missions by increasing efficiency and effectiveness in the overall warrant process. Watch the “Serving Smarter with Docusign: The Digital Warrant Process from Start to Finish” on-demand webinar to learn more.