Even though Mary Jourdan said her Cadillac was parked when somebody backed a trailer into it this past October, the other driver’s insurance company wouldn’t look at her claim until she could obtain a written report from the Vicksburg Police Department.

“I could not even get an estimate on my car,” or a rental, Jourdan said. “It’s a no-brainer: The guy backs into a parked car.”

She credits help from a “friend of a friend” for getting the needed report from the police two days later.

“She told me that normally it takes a couple of weeks,” Jourdan said.

New technology is making the process of getting wreck claims filed and paid in Vicksburg slower, although some sources said there’s no reason it should. Especially if a vehicle is disabled in a wreck, delays can mean hardship waiting extra time for repairs to begin.

Police Chief Tommy Moffett said that before October, officers were required to complete and turn in collision reports by the end of their shifts. But since adopting the Mississippi Department of Public Safety’s automated collision reporting system about four months ago, officers are given five days to complete the reports. They are then submitted to the state, which will reject them if flawed.

Moffett said the department deliberately dragged its feet on changing to ReportBeam, the automated system the Department of Public Safety began offering municipal law enforcement agencies in 2005. Moffett said the system is inconvenient for his officers. Only after being threatened with ineligibility for grants such as those which provide resources for alcohol awareness education did the Vicksburg department make the change, he said.

Before the new technology was applied here, collision reports were filled out by hand — with a stub given to drivers at the scene of the accident providing insurance information for those involved. With that information, drivers could contact their insurance carriers and adjusters would go to work authorizing repairs. The information is now entered into an electronic system that sends the information to the DPS. Drivers get nothing at the scene, and reports generally are not available to drivers for several days.

Moffett said it’s because the reports take longer to fill out on a computer that he allows more time for completion. He’s trying to keep officers of the department, short-staffed by about 20 people, on their beats, he said.

“It costs me time and money,” Moffett said. “I have to pull officers off the road to fill them out.”

In contrast, Warren County Sheriff Martin Pace dismissed the suggestion that ReportBeam was slow or inconvenient. Deputies have filed accident reports using the system since March 2005.

“It’s actually faster in terms of getting the info to Jackson,” Pace said. “They review and release it, generally the following day, and you can turn it over to the driver and insurance company.”

Pace, who helped create the standard collision report, said the sheriff’s department tells people to come pick up their report the day after an accident.

Ron Sennett of the Office of Highway Safety, a division of the DPS, said he didn’t doubt the reports filed under the ReportBeam system — touted for its expediency — are taking Vicksburg police longer to fill out. They require more information, he said, adding that after switching over, many departments experienced a learning curve.

ReportBeam, through which incident reports can be transferred promptly and sometimes sold online to those involved (obtaining a report usually costs a fee) was adopted in Mississippi under a DPS initiative to automate the collection of traffic collision reports, in order to improve recordkeeping and make reports available to the public sooner.

An initial plan to scan handwritten reports into computer systems was “an abject failure” complicated by officers’ frequently illegible handwriting, Sennett said.

A claims adjuster, Chal Pace of Alpha Insurance, said the electronic reports have improved speed and convenience.

“The quicker the better,” he said. “That’s what’s most important in our system, to get information as fast as possible to make decisions on liability.” About 20 percent of auto claims are decided based on a police report, he said.

Before the computerized system, collision reports reached the central office via the postal service, which did little to speed the process.

Paper reports may still be submitted to the central records office. Sennett said about 85 percent of accident reports are now submitted electronically.

Sennett, who administers grants for the Office of Highway Safety, said a policy was issued in October that law enforcement departments not providing collision reports to DPS would not be eligible for grants.

Municipal law enforcement agencies are required by state law to comply with DPS directives, and Sennett said there is a “vested need” for the information. The collision reports are used for traffic studies and analysis of statewide and local trends.

Major Gibson, unit supervisor in Mississippi Highway Patrol’s driver services division, said that after standards changed in 2005, Vicksburg police did not submit any accident reports to state records — resuming only a few months ago.

“Once we went to ReportBeam system, they refused to do it,” she said.

“We took the report and told them the info was here and available if they wanted it. If they wanted statistical data, it was available,” Deputy Chief Richard O’Bannon said. “We said, ‘well, we’re not going to do them in ReportBeam, but we have the data here if you need it.'”

State law mandates that local law enforcement follow DPS directives and report auto accidents, said Steven Coleman, an attorney with the Office of Highway Patrol.

Sennett said he knew of no penalty for not reporting information.

Since the Vicksburg Police Department has resumed submitting its data, Sennett called the problem “water under the bridge.”

He said there are other Mississippi law enforcement agencies that do not report collision data to DPS as required, but declined to name any of them.