Police agencies around Southwest Michigan have been working around the global technology outage that occurred on Friday morning.

The Cass County Sheriff’s Department says central dispatch phone services were hit by the issue. However, despite the challenges created by that, Sheriff Richard Behnke says dispatch managed to maintain communications with the public by relying on backup equipment.

Behnke says thanks to the department’s 911 phone vendor, full functionality was restored by 11 a.m. He adds the incident “underscores the importance of having robust backup systems in place for critical services like emergency dispatch.”

Meanwhile, Berrien County Undersheriff Greg Sanders tells us he’s checked around, and there were no issues with Berrien County Central Dispatch.

The global tech outage on Friday was caused by CrowdStrike, a cyber security firm. It issued an update to Microsoft systems that disabled computers around the world. The company says it’s since resolved the core issue.