Technical outage hits police systems, traffic lights in German cities

A technical outage lasting several hours disrupted key systems in several cities in Germany’s North Rhine-Westphalia state on Tuesday, affecting police operations, traffic lights and businesses, authorities said.

The disruption affected the dispatch system used by the control centre and police stations of the Wuppertal police headquarters, police said. Emergency phone services, however, remained reachable.

Traffic light failures were also reported in the cities of Wuppertal, Remscheid and Solingen.

Some shops were forced to close because of problems with cash register systems, police said.

The outage lasted from about 4:15 pm (1415 GMT) to 7:30 pm. Criminal police are investigating the cause of the disruption.