Sault Ste. Marie Police Service Chief Hugh Stevenson says a cyber attack that essentially locked the law enforcement agency out of its own system is close to being resolved.
The attack, initially discovered Aug. 26, resulted in the encryption of several administrative and record management systems.
“Police operations have continued throughout the cyber attack, and we are 90 per cent back to where we were pre-cyber attack,” Stevenson said.
However, information packages that are routinely supplied to Police Services Board members and members of the local media prior to monthly police board meetings have been noticeably absent. In particular, monthly crime statistics, which have informed a number of SooToday articles highlighting property crime and other criminal activity in Sault Ste. Marie, are not available.
The last monthly crime statistics provided to the Police Services Board and the media through the board meeting information packages were from June 2021.
“We’re still recovering that data from the cyber attack, so it wasn’t in any way, shape or form trying to not present it - it’s just we don’t physically have it ourselves,” Stevenson said following Thursday’s police board meeting, when asked about the prolonged absence of crime stats.
“We don’t have the official board package stats,” added police spokesperson Lincoln Louttit. "We’re kind of able to do one-off requests, which I’ve done with other media outlets,” Louttit said
Stevenson didn’t know when the crime statistics could reappear in the police board’s meeting materials when asked Thursday.