Doesn't really surprise me. I've worked at banks where typewriters were still in use, for filling out certain infrequently-used forms and preparing titles and

Doesn't really surprise me. I've worked at banks where typewriters were still in use, for filling out certain infrequently-used forms and preparing titles and deeds. It costs a significant amount of time and money to construct an electronic form and integrate it into the existing automated workflow; if the users only see a form a few times a year, and it changes every year, you might be talking about several thousand dollars per use to computerize that form. There's no way that's cost effective, and it's cheaper and more efficient just to keep a typewriter around. It's a basic diminishing-returns proposition. In a forms-heavy environment (which I'd imagine a police department is), you get great ROI automating the most commonly-used forms. Then you can breakeven or get some ROI on most of the rest of them. But in almost every situation there's always going to be one or two forms that just aren't worth automating. In some places that means just hand-filling them, but in others that means a typewriter. A typewriter is a totally acceptable solution to the problem in some cases. It's a bit silly that some people freak out so badly when they see them; if you see a typewriter in a workplace that also has a modern electronic-forms system with automated workflow and everything else, chances are somebody did the analysis and realized that it just doesn't make sense to get rid of the typewriter for the sake of getting rid of the typewriter.