LA County Sheriff: Weekend internet disruption delayed release of 5 inmates

The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department is disputing reports that its systems crashed, delaying the release of a number of inmates over the weekend.

In a statement released Tuesday, LASD officials there was a disruption Saturday of internet-based services and applications, both within the department and across a large area of Los Angeles County.

"Our systems did not 'crash' as reported, nor were they the cause of the problem," the sheriff's statement said.

The sheriff's department said the disruption was the result of a loss of connectivity, which was identified and repaired by AT&T.

A sheriff's captain told the Los Angeles Times that the outage happened at the Men's Central Jail in downtown Los Angeles due to a manhole fire, forcing jail staff to process inmate release materials by hand.

During the disruption, some of the sheriff's web applications were not accessible or were connecting intermittently, including the Automated Jail Information System, which accesses several other databases and is used to assist with conducting inmate releases. The internet disruption delayed the release of approximately five inmates between Saturday and Monday, sheriff's officials said.

Sheriff's officials say its systems are now back to normal.