Dallas Police Department

2021: Irretrievable deletion of 8 TB of criminal data

In August 2021, Dallas police reported that one of the employees accidentally deleted 8 TB of criminal data. Information that has been permanently deleted has been used as evidence in certain cases.

According to Gizmodo, data was lost during the planned data migration, which was carried out in early April 2021. The IT officer tasked with managing the process "did not follow proper procedures," which led to the "deletion of data files," the police said in a statement. Law enforcement agencies and the city IT department took months to disclose this incident to other authorities. In fact, the city hall and the prosecutor's office only learned about the loss of data in August.

Dallas police randomly irretrievably deleted 8 TB of criminal data

Initially, 22 TB of data was lost, but 14 TB was restored, as reported by the Dallas police. The remaining 8 TB is considered non-recoverable. The district attorney's office said it did not hear about the incident until August 6, until a request was filed about why "files on pending cases were missing."

The lost files, which include "images, videos and audio recordings, as well as other physical evidence collected by police officers in the course of their daily duties," jeopardized numerous court cases.

Explaining the reason for the silence, the police said they intended to fully assess the scale of the incident and find out whether it is possible to restore the data.

Mayor Eric Johnson is demanding an investigation into the incident:

Dallas residents deserve to know what happened, why top city staff have been silent for months, and what can be done to address these critical issues affecting public safety. This news is particularly staggering because the issue was apparently known to some Dallas city officials for several months, but only caught our attention when the Dallas County district attorney notified lawyers of the issue.[1]

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