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Chief Flynn to Aldermen: Computer Crash Did Not Compromise Safety

    

Members of the Milwaukee Police Department on Thursday updated city leaders on the progress of recovering lost interrogation videos. A handful were destroyed when one of the department’s computers crashed in January.

Members of the police department spoke to the Common Council’s Public Safety committee. IT Director Chuck Burke described what happened the day of the computer crash.

“We had two disk drive failures, which was recoverable. In the process of the system recovering those failed drives, a third one failed, making the system inoperable,” Burke says.

Burke says the department is working with a company in New York to recover the files and won’t know for another few weeks whether any were permanently lost. He says even if some video is ultimately not recovered, all of the audio files are still available.

Police Chief Edward Flynn says when he learned of the failure, he told the District Attorney and other law enforcement officials, but did not notify members of the Common Council. Ald. Joe Davis questioned whether the department followed proper procedure.

Davis: “I would have thought that we would have gotten the opportunity to at least be briefed in closed session about the possibility of a system crash within the Milwaukee Police Department. Most other departments do it, chief.”

Flynn: “We operate a large number of complex information technology systems. We don’t notify you every time there’s a problem with our in-car cameras. We don’t notify you every time we have a computer that doesn’t work. Today, the printer in my office broke and we have three people tracing it,” Flynn says.

Flynn insists the public is safe, in the wake of the equipment failure. Another alderman wondered whether the council should launch an independent investigation into the matter.

Council President Michael Murphy says he accepts the chief’s explanation and asked members of the department to provide another progress report in a few weeks.

Marti was a reporter with WUWM from 1999 to 2021.