Crime sight imagers, UV scanners, blood testing kits and other similar tools sound like they're something you'd only see in an episode of CSI.

But these tools are actually being used on the streets right now.

Over the past year, the College Station police department have been adding new gadgets to their forensics department, to make their job at accident sites and crime scenes easier.

"For accident reconstruction, it could take [crime scene investigators], for a bad scene, 10-12 hours," said Liza Phillips, who is a forensics investigator for the department. " When we set up the total station, it usually takes us 2-4 hours to shoot a scene."

Inside the squad cars, there's a new piece of equipment that's increased the safety of police officers.

Writing tickets actually puts street patrol officers at a higher risk of danger, due to the fact that they aren't able to keep an eye on traffic or the violator in the car.

So officers have been recently outfitted with electronic ticket writing units, which allows the officer to pay more attention to what's going on around them and less time on the ticket book.

"You can scan a driver's license right here, or you can scan a little laser and scan the registration sticker, input the information, vehicle, violator, and location. And once it's completed, you can print the citation and give it to the violator," Sargent Thomas Brown said.

And the technology advancements aren't just helping the police department.

College Station paramedics are able to spend more time these days saving lives. With the new portable laptops they purchased four months ago, paramedics have not only been able to give accurate information regarding the patient to the hospital, but have also cut back the amount of time they spend on paperwork by more than half.

"When we had the paper system, it went through a four to five step process to gather information before it ever went out to be complete. Now our guys are out of the hospital within 15 minutes of delivering a patient." Lieutenant Robert Mumford said.

And while they come with a big price tag, all agree that the technology is necessary to help solve cases and save lives.

"In this day and age with technology, you have to do this, you have to have this kind of equipment. Otherwise you're behind the times and you can't keep up," Phillips said.