The Saint John Police Force headquarters, located at One Peel Plaza. (Staff photo)
A cyberattack which shut down Saint John’s IT services also impacted the city’s police force.
Many of the computer systems used by officers were taken offline after the attack in November.
Chief Stephan Drolet said it created more work for frontline officers in order to collect file information.
“We had to come up with a workaround because we didn’t have computers. We went to a pen-and-paper police function,” Drolet told the Saint John Police Commission on Tuesday.
Drolet said a file which usually takes an hour was taking around two or three hours for an officer to complete.
Commission members heard during their meeting that the systems should be back up this week.
Drolet said the next task will be inputting three months worth of information into those systems.
“I don’t want the officers to do that, so we’re bringing in administrative staff and we’re repurposing some of our administrative staff to do that so that we free up police officers to go and take calls,” he said.
The cyberattack did not impact the public-facing side of policing, said Drolet. If someone called 9-1-1, officers were still able to respond and do their investigations.
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