Global IT outage shuts down Modesto-area law enforcement computers. Everything goes ‘old school’

What’s being called one of the world’s largest IT blackouts affected local law enforcement agencies last night, shutting down computer systems for the Modesto Police Department and the Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Office.

On Thursday night, an issue with the cybersecurity company CrowdStrike occurred during an update. The company’s software is used by industries such as government, healthcare, transportation and law enforcement.

Around the globe, agencies and companies are reporting they can’t access the internet. Flights were delayed, planes were grounded and several government’s services were shut down.

“It’s out of our control, we’re waiting for a nation-wide program to resolve itself,” said MPD’s Lt. Eric Schuller. “If there’s something we could do, we will but we’re not there yet.”

MPD and the Sheriff’s Office reported their systems went down sometime around 10 p.m. Both agencies reported they are going ‘old-school’ by dispatching calls over radio and writing police reports by hand on paper.

MPD reported that it had no internet access on any of its desktops at its station and that laptops inside its squad cars were also down. The Sheriff’s Office reported that all of it’s computers and some of its cell phones also went down, but that about half of them were back online by 9 a.m. on Friday morning.

One Sheriff’s deputy reported having to reboot his cell phone and laptop about 14 times before it came back online.

911 calls were still reported to be processed as normal — being dispatched by the regional call center with further communication being done over radio. Non-emergency phone calls were also not affected.

Body-worn cameras were reported to have not been affected by the outage.

This is a breaking news story and will be updated as more information becomes available.