Va. Department Affected by Blackberry Outage

Richmond (Va.) Police officers lost the ability to communicate or browse the Internet Thursday, after Blackberry smart-phone users lost service on five continents.

Research in Motion, the company that produces the devices, has fixed the technical issues that caused the outages, and warned that it could take several days to fully restore service, reports the New York Times.

Deputy Chief Vincent says the Blackberry outage is not affecting the department's ability to respond to an emergency, reports WTVR.

"Emergency dispatches are done through the radio," Vincent said. "Then notifications to command staff that are not readily sitting next to their radio will get an emergency notification via a text message."

Sources: New York Times , WTVR