TOLEDO, OH (Toledo News Now) - A computer system police and courts rely on to check criminal backgrounds is back in operation after being offline for a period of time Tuesday.
Police use the Northwest Ohio Regional Information System all the time. They use it to access warrants, mug shots, reports and check license plates numbers.
The system's director said NORIS went down due to a server problem around 8:30 Tuesday morning, but it was fully back in operation for most users by about 12:30.
The system is basically a web of criminal justice information. Courts, such as Toledo Municipal Court, rely on NORIS for records. Tuesday's problem did cause a small backlog. For Toledo Police, NORIS is the main system officers use to check records, plus they can access it from their patrol cars.
When the system goes down there are still other systems the department can use. Officers can manually check records to get information, but it does cause a hassle for police.
"When NORIS goes down it provides a little bit of an inconvenience for us sometimes. We have to dig a little bit further. A little bit more effort [is] involved to find the information that we need to find. But we can still access what we need to access," explained Sgt. Joe Heffernan.
