Milwaukee police are investigating a cyber incident that hit the department’s High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas unit Friday, a source told local media, marking the latest in a decade of cyber problems for the agency.
A Milwaukee police source told CBS 58 the Milwaukee Police Department experienced a “cyber incident” Friday, Nov. 21, affecting only the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas (HIDTA) unit, where confidential information is stored.
The source said it is not yet clear whether ransomware is involved or whether any data was stolen, and did not describe what systems or servers were disrupted. CBS 58 reported that it has reached out to the department for more information and that officials have not yet provided an on-the-record statement.
The HIDTA program is a federally funded initiative that supports coordinated drug-trafficking investigations in designated hot spots, providing intelligence and analytical support to federal, state, local and tribal law enforcement agencies. An interruption inside a HIDTA unit can affect how agencies share case files and intelligence, even if 911, patrol and other public-facing services remain online.
This is not the first time Milwaukee police systems have been targeted. In late 2014, the department’s website was taken offline after becoming “the target of an Internet hack.” A department spokesman said at the time that the site was pulled down overnight when a vulnerability was discovered and would stay down for days while upgrades were installed “to prevent a future disruption.”
Coverage of that 2014 incident noted tweets from accounts associated with Anonymous, including posts that “MilwaukeePoliceNews.com is DOWN,” and suggested a link between the cyberattack and protests over the fatal police shooting of Dontre Hamilton. Milwaukee police confirmed the site had been “disabled by an outside group,” but did not publicly identify who was responsible.
A little more than a year later, in December 2015, the department’s news website again went offline after an attack. CBS 58 reported in January 2016 that Milwaukee police were upgrading the news site’s security after an “outside group” disabled it around 10 p.m. on Dec. 30, temporarily knocking the site off the internet.
In its 2021 annual report, the department said it had procured, installed and configured an anti-spyware and ransomware backup solution for MPD’s mission-critical information systems, reflecting the growing concern about ransomware hitting law enforcement infrastructure. Milwaukee has also been included in statewide cyber planning and has been listed among local partners in national-level cyber incident exercises, according to federal and state homeland security documents.
The Milwaukee Police incident comes amid a steady drumbeat of cyber hits across Wisconsin, where attackers have recently disrupted critical infrastructure, government and private-sector networks. In May 2025, a cyberattack crippled Cellcom’s voice and text services statewide, while Iowa County is still recovering from an April 2025 network breach that forced systems offline. Earlier that year, National Presto Industries in Eau Claire suffered a major outage from a cyberattack, and in late 2024 the City of Sheboygan confirmed a network intrusion and ransom demand.
Milwaukee is Wisconsin’s largest city, with roughly 570,000 residents and a police force of more than 1,500 sworn officers, including specialized units such as HIDTA that support long-term narcotics and violent-crime investigations.
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