Oakland’s computer-aided dispatch system and internet are back online Thursday evening, but phone service is still affected, police said.
A possible copper wire theft took out the city’s 911 dispatch services Wednesday night, and police Chief James Beere said his department is still looking for a suspect.
Although computer-aided dispatch has been restored, police said about 5:30 p.m. Thursday that the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office continues to answer 911 calls and relay them to OPD.
The city’s IT team is continuing to work with AT&T to restore phone service, police said.
Oakland’s 911 dispatch system for police and fire services went down at about 8:30 p.m. Wednesday, and calls are being routed through the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office while the problem gets sorted out.
“Earlier this morning, we did confirm that there was damage to not just the fiber optics, but also to the copper lines,” Beere said at a news conference Thursday afternoon. “We had already treated it as an investigation, as a criminal act.”
Beere said in his almost 30 years with the department he’s never seen the optic lines go out and the phones being disconnected in a way that impacted the fire department system, as well.
“It was very concerning,” he said.
Damage from the alleged theft resulted in the department’s computer-aided dispatch system going down. Dispatchers then tried both emergency and non-emergency lines and discovered there was no service to all phone lines, internet or the CAD.
Just after 9:45 p.m. Wednesday, all 911 calls were transferred to the Sheriff’s Office while OPD dispatchers were relocated to the Oakland Fire Department Dispatch Center and the sheriff’s dispatch center.
The Fire Department’s dispatchers are still able to handle all fire and medical calls for service, and the county is currently answering 911 calls and relaying information to OPD dispatchers stationed at the Fire Department.
The city has contingency plans for just such a situation, but “unfortunately both of the initial fallback plans were compromised last night,” Beere said without elaborating on what the fallback plans are.
Beere said earlier in the day on Thursday that his department was only responding to “priority one calls” and that Oakland’s information technology department is working with AT&T to restore services.
“I want to reassure every single one of our residents that 911 is open for your calls and dispatchers are available,” said Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee, who also attended the news conference.
Tony Batalla, the city’s IT director, said his office is working with AT&T “to mitigate and strengthen our infrastructure and ensure incidents like this don’t happen.”
AT&T issued a statement confirming the damage and, along with Beere, urged people to report any suspicious activity to the police.
Beere said he has spoken with Oakland Fire Department Chief Damon Covington about “exploring new technology that’s not reliant on an infrastructure with lines that are running across the ground, but also more up to speed on what we see as the best practice to continue communications in the region.”
The OAK311 lines are impacted by the same outage, so people with non-emergency problems like potholes or illegal dumping should send an email to [email protected].
This story was updated at 10:30 p.m. Thursday to reflect additional updates on the restoration of Oakland’s 911 dispatch services and phone lines.