Court employees across the state hand-wrote warrant, bail and case data all day yesterday - an unwelcome blast from the past thanks to damaged Verizon cables in Annapolis that shut down the Maryland judiciary's computer system.
The cables affecting the court system were to be repaired yesterday evening, but cables providing phone service to about 6,300 businesses and homes in Annapolis and Parole might not be repaired until this weekend, a Verizon spokeswoman said.
Affected businesses and offices along Jennifer Road included the county jail and the county school system.
Overnight yesterday, a contractor cut into two fiber optic cables and two copper cables that are buried near the entrance to Westfield Annapolis Mall at West Street and Jennifer Road.
Three of the cables were severed completely, said Sandra Arnette, a spokeswoman for Mid-Atlantic Verizon. The fiber optic cables were to be repaired first, and then work was to begin on the copper cables, she said.
Annapolis Mall is in the midst of a $100 million, 240,000-square-foot expansion and has contracted with Whiting-Turner. Representatives of Whiting-Turner and Westfield did not return phone calls yesterday.
Darrell Pressley, spokesman for Maryland judiciary, said all District and Circuit courts were without access to computerized criminal records and case information.
"What this has done is slowed us down, but it hasn't stopped us," Pressley said.
Court employees reported that their biggest problem was in taking phone calls from the public.
"When people are calling today and trying to find information about cases, we're totally blind," said Laura Thompson, manager of the civil division in the Howard County Circuit Court Clerk's Office.
Several bondsmen said there were delays all day with posting bail. The effect, if any, on police officers on the streets was unclear.
To run warrant checks, officers call dispatchers who access the National Crime Information Center, which was unaffected by the outage, said Officer Nicole Monroe, a spokeswoman for the Baltimore Police Department.
One definite impact will be financial, according to court employees. It could take hours of overtime to enter the data collected yesterday.
"All the work we did manually today will have to be in-putted tomorrow," said James Reilly, clerk of Harford County Circuit Court.
Jackie Priest, a clerk in the criminal and juvenile division of Howard Circuit, said that bonds yesterday were processed by hand. Paperwork, she said, was completed, placed in a file and then set aside for data entry when the computer system returns.
"It has put us at a stand still," said Margaret D. Rappaport, the Clerk of the Circuit Court. "We were all caught up, but now we won't be until this gets fixed."
In Annapolis, businesses along Jennifer Road were the hardest hit. Fliers were distributed by Annapolis Management Co., which runs Annapolis Plaza, saying that they were told by Verizon that service won't be restored until Saturday.
Because some fire alarms were not working, the plaza stationed guards at unoccupied buildings to ward off break-ins and fires.
While the mall was mostly unaffected, many of the stores at the plaza posted "cash or credit only" signs on the doors.
Without the phone lines, most businesses haven't been able to process checks, debit cards or gift cards or use the Internet. They can still accept credit cards, but have to call the company's phone number for every transaction.
Pointing to the three customers waiting in line at Bike Doctor, employee David Yarbrough said it would probably take a half-hour for them to purchase bikes.
"We've been considering closing since it takes so long," Yarbrough said.
Melinda Bednarik of Annapolis Management Co., which manages the plaza, said Verizon called her on her cell phone to notify her of the cable cut, saying that they hope to restore services by this Saturday.
"We're doing everything we can," Bednarik, "but nothing else can really be done."
julie.bykowicz@baltsun.com
Sun reporters Rochelle McConkie, Melissa Harris, Mary Gail Hare, Susan Reimer and Jennifer McMenamin contributed to this article.