St. Louis police lose crime files

Police officers might be forced to dig out their notes and re-create parts of a week’s worth or more of reports on crime and traffic crashes after the department’s computer system crashed.

The worst-case scenario is that the narrative portions of as many as 6,000 records may be missing, said Barbara Wright, executive director of planning and technology for the department.

"We told their commanders we’d know on Monday what information has to be retyped," she said. "It looks like the only thing that won’t be there when we restore it will be about a week’s worth of reports. And the only part that has to be re-created are their little paragraphs."

Officials are investigating whether the firing earlier this month of a network administrator had anything to do with the computer crash. continue...