On Saturday, the Chicago Police Department's computer systems went down for a full 24 hours, according to the Second City Cop blog, which described the entire police force "reverting to paper arrest reports, paper inventories, no fingerprints, no photographs, no anything." The malfunction also apparently caused the lock-ups to "overfill," as those arrested on petty offenses weren't being processed at the normal clip. It's reasonable to expect that a prolonged computer "blackout" of this sort would eventually start draining the streets of police officers as more and more of them are stuck filling out hard-copy forms they haven't touched in years (if ever).
Seems like a story worth reporting on, particularly considering it's been less than a month since calls were found to be "disappearing completely" from the city's 911 emergency system.
So can you find a single news article on it? I sure can't.
Comments
Randall Sherman (not verified) on Mon, 04/20/2009 - 21:24
It's just another indication as to how slipslod our second-rate news media is in Chicago. What a disgrace!
Joseph Finn (not verified) on Mon, 04/20/2009 - 21:33
So do we have any confirmation besides the maybe-cops at Second City?
FJC 1919 (not verified) on Tue, 04/21/2009 - 05:07
It may even have been justifiable to moratorium this story while it was happening over the weekend. The grapevine would have been bad enough, as to prompting a crime wave right at the moment, without it being published. But days later?!
Actually, SCC reports today that there were some more problems Monday
http://secondcitycop.blogspot.com/2009/04/clear-crashes-again.html
Compare to the basic investigative core of the recent and still-current mental health story:
http://www.chitowndailynews.org/Chicago_news/Exclusive_Billing_glitch_le...
http://progressillinois.com/2009/4/7/%2416-million-upgrade-four-clinics
http://www.chitowndailynews.org/Chicago_news/Mental_health_providers_fru...
Josh Kalven on Tue, 04/21/2009 - 07:45
FJC: Good point about reporting on it in real time. But as you go on to note, it would seem safe to mention it 72 hours later.
Joseph: I'm working on getting confirmation from the CPD.
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