The scene depicted is a daily occurrence in courthouses across the country. Almost everyone involved loses. Officers must cancel personal plans to accommodate court hearings set on scheduled days off. Courts and prosecutors are unable to plan which cases will actually go to trial, and when. Police agencies incur huge overtime expenses.
Many courts attempt to coordinate officer schedules with planned court appearances.
In most cases, this coordination is done manually from pages of printed schedules. Often, these schedules are badly out of date. But District Court No. 1, a traffic and misdemeanor court in Tacoma, Wash., has a better method. The system begins searching two weeks from the current date, looking for matching dates up to 60 days beyond that time. The clerk can see how many proceedings are already set at those times for a given judge.