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Verizon Outage Takes NYPD Data Systems Offline For Hours

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- The entire NYPD except 1 Police Plaza lost access to its data systems Thursday due to a Verizon outage.

Around 11:50 a.m., the portion of the Verizon network that serves the NYPD experienced a network equipment failure resulting in an outage.

The outage affected internal administrative and arrest processing systems. But the department went on taking reports on paper worksheets, and no data were lost, the NYPD said.

The 911 call-taking and dispatch systems were not affected.

The system meltdown happened during a maintenance operation initiated by Verizon, which tried to address the problem immediately. But hours later, the problem had not been fixed, the NYPD said.

The NYPD then decided to bypass the Verizon network and move onto a redundant proprietary network owned by the department. The bypass was finished at 3:55 p.m., and connectivity was restored, the department said.

During the outage, the NYPD continued taking reports on paper worksheets, and no data were lost.

The NYPD will return to the Verizon network once Verizon corrects the issue.

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