Demanding answers: Aldermen question police chief over server crash



MILWAUKEE -- A computer crash affecting some criminal cases in the city of Milwaukee? It depends on who you ask. Thursday afternoon, May 28th Milwaukee alderman grilled the police chief about the problem and what's being done about it.

So far seven criminal cases are affected by a computer server crash. The police department says it is not having a huge impact -- but some alderman went on the offense.

When the criminal on the streets ends up in an interrogation room once arrested, that interrogation, possibly a confession, is recorded. When the server storing those video interviews crashes, as it did in January, some Milwaukee alderman are concerned they didn't find out about it until much later.

"I would have hoped we would have at least been briefed in closed session about the possibility of a system crash within the Milwaukee Police Department," said Milwaukee Alderman, Joe Davis.

MediaSolv, the company responsible for the crash was bought by a larger company, Tasar on May 14th. The chief hopes that will help the situation.

In the meantime, the department says it is negotiating a contract for another system and can get free cloud storage to back up the video interview recordings through that company.

The police department wont' say what the new contract is for, however, Tasar does have body camera technology. Body camera's on the front burner for the Milwaukee Police Department.

The IT director says in one to two weeks they will know how big a problem the computer crash is.