The city is plunking down nearly $1 million on typewriters for its keystroke cops.
That’s right — typewriters.
Despite the adoption of high-tech equipment that can read license plates from the air and detect radiological events before they happen, manual and electric typewriters continue to be used throughout the NYPD — and they won’t be phased out anytime soon, officials told The Post.
In fact, just last year, the city signed a $982,269 contract with New Jersey-based Swintec for the purchase of thousands of new manual and electric typewriters over the next three years — some of which retail for as much as $649 apiece.
And last month, the city signed a $99,570 deal with Afax Business Machines in Manhattan for the maintenance of its existing Brother, Panasonic and IBM Selectric typewriters.
In both cases, NYPD expenditures account for the bulk of the contract, sources told The Post.
Although most of the NYPD’s arrest-report forms have been computerized, cops still use typewriters to fill out property and evidence vouchers, which are printed on carbon-paper forms.
There are typewriters in every police precinct, including one in every detective squad.
“It just doesn’t make sense that we can’t enter these [vouchers] on computer,” one cop told The Post.
When the typewriter ribbons run out, as they often do, officers say the search for a working machine turns into a scene right of the ’70s sitcom “Barney Miller.”
“We have to sneak around the rest of the precinct in search of a ribbon to steal,” a cop said.
The reliance on typewriters contributes to the slow pace of processing arrests, said Dr. Edith Linn, a retired NYPD cop and professor of criminal justice at Berkeley College in Manhattan.
“The system is hobbled by redundant paperwork, misused personnel, broken equipment, backward technology,” Linn says in her 2008 book “Arrest Decisions.”
Of the roughly 500 NYPD officers Linn interviewed for a study on arrest behavior, many mentioned the outdated equipment as part of their reason for being averse to making arrests for less serious crimes.
But the few typewriter companies still in existence aren’t complaining.
Ed Michaels, sales manager of Swintec, said police departments are among its biggest clients.
“They have a lot of forms to fill out, so we’re still here,” he said.
The NYPD insists it has made progress over the past five years digitizing many processing forms.
The department also is working on software to eliminate the old machines, a rep said.
Additional reporting by Larry Celona