Alan Sorensen Havre Daily News hdn@havredailynews.com
Blame it on technology. The absence in Monday and today’s Havre Daily News of reports from the Havre Police Department and Hill County Sheriff’s Office is due to microwave problems between the agencies. “No information was lost,” Havre Chief of Police Mike Barthel said this morning. “The problem is with our microwave between the Hill County Sheriff’s Office and the Havre Police Department. The link was disabled between the Hill County Sheriff’s Office and the Havre Police Department, which disabled our software programs.” Barthel said work will be performed later today and that he hopes the problem can be resolved quickly. “The projection right now is hopefully by tomorrow,” he said. “We have technicians in route to Havre from Butte to hopefully climb the sheriff’s microwave tower to replace some of the components.” The microwave glitch prevented the agencies from providing reports from throughout the weekend and Monday. It has also forced dispatchers to revert from keyboarding to a handwriting. “We have to plug in all the hand-recorded data,” Barthel said. “The dispatcher is currently handwriting all complaints, and then once all the information is plugged back in, we can start disseminating again.” Barthel said steps are being taken to prevent a repeat of the shutdown. “Because of this problem, we’re exploring backup microwave components so we wouldn’t see this problem again in the near future,” he said.
