Midway Police Department
Midway police records ransomware incident
Summary
Midway, Florida, officials confirmed ransomware involving the police department’s SmartCOP records system in January 2026. The incident disrupted access to records and delayed public-records requests while investigators assessed possible data impact.
Key facts
Timeline
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First public signal:
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Earliest public indication of an outage, disruption, closure or other observable incident impact. The signal does not need to mention cybersecurity. -
First public cyber evidence:
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Earliest credible public information connecting the incident or disruption to malicious cyber activity. -
Official cyber disclosure:
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First official acknowledgment by the affected organization or an authoritative public body that the incident was cyber-related. -
Last impact seen:
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Latest public indication that disruption, degraded operations, recovery work or unresolved impact was still ongoing.
Primary victim organization
Impacted locations
Organization types
Critical infrastructure sector
DysruptionHub coverage
Incident characteristics
Assessments
DD-CIT assessment
The organization publicly identifies the event as cyber-related. The organization publicly documents the resulting service disruption.
Attack mechanisms
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Ransomware
Malware that encrypts systems or data, typically accompanied by a ransom demand.
Data impacts
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Data unavailable
Authorized users could not access required data because of the incident, even when the data was not encrypted, deleted, or destroyed.
Operational impacts
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Partial service outage
A service, system, platform, or operational capability remained available only in part or with significant limitations.
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Database unavailable
A database or data-management system became unavailable or inaccessible.
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Records access disruption
Staff, customers, patients, students, residents, or other users could not access records or case information normally.
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Records processing disruption
The organization could not create, update, search, file, approve, transmit, or otherwise process records normally.
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Government services disrupted
Public administrative, licensing, permitting, court, tax, records, benefits, or other government services were materially affected.
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Service delay
Services continued but with longer processing, response, delivery, or completion times.
Extortion indicators
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Unknown extortion indicators
The incident may involve extortion, but available evidence does not establish which extortion indicators were present.
Incident narrative
Analyst assessment
Our reporting confirms with high confidence that the Midway Police Department experienced a ransomware incident involving its SmartCOP records system. City officials confirmed both the cyber incident and ransomware, while no named actor claim was located.
Operational significance
The department lost access to some records, and residents experienced delays obtaining requested public records. Officials warned residents about suspicious messages while the Gadsden County Sheriff’s Office investigated.
The impacted municipality is Midway in Gadsden County, Florida.
Confidence and uncertainty
Confidence is high that ransomware affected records access because city officials confirmed it. Data exposure status is unknown: officials had not established whether records were accessed or removed. Encryption scope, ransom communications and actor attribution also remain unknown.
Disclosure posture
City officials confirmed the cyber incident, ransomware and records disruption, supporting organization-confirmed cyber and disruption transparency.
Current status
The incident is presumed resolved because no continuing records outage was located months later, although no final restoration notice was found.
Analytic gaps
The public record does not establish initial access, ransomware family, actor, affected records, data theft, ransom demand, payment, recovery cost or full restoration date.
Organizations involved
Impacted location
Sources
We reported the city’s ransomware confirmation, SmartCOP records disruption and ongoing investigation.
WTXL reported officials’ ransomware confirmation and resident difficulty obtaining police records.
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