Houston PD limits arrests as computer virus forces court shutdown

[Pat McCotter]

HPD limits arrests as computer virus forces court shutdown
09:20 PM CST on Friday, February 6, 2009
By Lee McGuire and Alex Sanz / 11News 

HOUSTON -- Houston Police officers have stopped arresting people with outstanding traffic warrants, as the effects of a malicious computer virus continue to cascade throughout Houston government agencies.

According to HPD spokesman John Cannon, police will generally not take people suspected of Class C misdemeanors to jail until the computers at the city's Municipal Court system are restored. Houston Mayor Bill White took the unusual step of ordering all of the city's Municipal Courts to shut down until at least Monday evening.

"The people we pull over with outstanding traffic warrants will be issued a citation rather than being taken to jail," Cannon said. "Anyone suspected of a violent crime will be taken to jail. We're not cutting back on that."

Problems with city government computers first cropped up Wednesday morning at the Municipal Court building at 1400 Lubbock. Gwendolyn Goins, a spokesperson for the court system, said employees noticed the systems were slowing down and denying access to some files.

"On Thursday, the problem seemed to spread to other computers," she said.

By Thursday night, city officials were scrambling to contain the damage from a computer virus they now suspect is the "Conficker" virus, the latest super virus to spread around the Web. Named after a German pun that means "program that manipulates the configuration," Conficker infected nearly nine million computers worldwide last month.

Houston's Information Technology Department authorized an emergency contract with an outside agency late Thursday to help stop the spread of the virus and repair infected computers at a cost of up to $25,000.

On Friday morning, Municipal Court workers had added extra shifts and were conducting court business with pens and paper. Goins said that while the system had slowed down, court business was still being conducted. "We don't have any significant delays in the courtroom, but some courtrooms are a little bit busier than others simply because the docket is longer," she said.

Defense attorneys disagreed. Two of them – Kameron Searle and Sid McNeice – approached an 11News crews to say that most judges were simply resetting court cases for a later date, rather than processing them.

"The courts are a mess," Searle said. "Justice ceases, and there's really nothing going on in the building."

Mayor Bill White ordered all Municipal Courts across the city to close at 4 p.m. Friday. Those courts would normally be open throughout the evening and weekend. Goins said that all cases that had been scheduled through Monday evening would be automatically postponed for a later date.

Other Municipal Court services, like the payment of tickets and fees, would still be available both in-person and on-line, she said.

According to a spokesman for the Houston Information Technology Department, the virus appears to be contained to the Municipal Court and Parking Management systems within the City of Houston. While the virus has blocked access to most data on computer hard drives, it does not appear to have erased any information.

Other city departments are taking precautions Friday to keep their systems from being infected. At the Houston Emergency Center, officials disconnected the systems that operate the city's 911 system from city servers. According to director David Cutler, this did not affect 911 services, but has forced police officers to use radios rather than computers to respond to emergency calls.

In addition, Cannon said that Police Department jails have also shut down some computer systems as a precaution. The owners of one bonding agency told 11News that the process of releasing prisoners and processing bond payment information "has slowed considerably."

Home computer users shouldn't worry. Last year, Microsoft released a patch to combat the virus by way of an automatic download, last year.

[AntonLee]

it's funny that we're protected at home but the police department with their millions of dollars in spending can't get computers that have a patch available.

I hope this virus spreads through all government computer banks.  I hope people create new and fun ones and target them at the places that mean the most. . . stop hacking people, start hacking governments.

[FTL_Ian]

Nice.