Loss of DPD investigative information during data transfer could affect criminal cases, D.A. says

Updated at 7:55 pm: Revised to include more information.

The loss of files of investigative information from the Dallas Police Department during the migration of the Dallas City computer system earlier this year could affect an unknown number of criminal cases, the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office said.

District Attorney John Creuzot briefed defense attorneys on Wednesday of the data loss in a memo. Dallas police and city officials are working to determine what the cases are, saying the data loss was applied to cases investigated by detectives that occurred before July 28, 2020, according to Creuzot’s memo .

Johannes Creuzot(Tom Fox / Employee Photographer)

“It is currently too early to estimate how many cases will be affected and how this will affect these individual cases,” said Creuzot in a prepared statement to journalists.

The city of Dallas announced on Wednesday that the files were lost when an IT staff member moved files from an online cloud-based repository to an on-premise server in the Dallas data center.

During the transfer of the files “the employee had not followed the proper, established procedures, which led to the deletion of the files,” said the city in a prepared statement.

The potential impact on victims and defendants awaiting trial is unclear, as is the cases where lack of data has resulted in plea negotiations or convictions.

Private defense lawyers are waiting to hear if their cases are among those affected. Attorneys at the Dallas County Public Defender’s Office are combing cases to see if they can locate those they suspect may have been affected, Chief Public Defender Lynn Richardson said. Once cases are identified, lawyers could ask judges to dismiss cases or even overturn judgments.

City officials learned of the problem four months ago, on April 5, according to Creuzot’s memo, but did not inform prosecutors until Friday after prosecutors asked why pending cases were missing files.

The city said it did not notify prosecutors earlier because “it was our intention to fully assess whether the data is recoverable or not”. [and] to know the full extent of the problem, if at all. “

Creuzot said in his memo that Dallas police and the city told his office on Friday that several terabytes of police data had been lost in the migration. Creuzot’s office requested more information and received a response Monday afternoon, according to his memo.

(From right) Josiah Smith, 6, hands Leo Martinez, 6, his water bottle after opening it for him on Monday, August 2, 2021, the first day of school at HI Holland Elementary School in Dallas.  (Juan Figueroa / The Dallas Morning News)

The response said that between March 31 and April 5, 22 terabytes were deleted. Officials were able to recover about 14 terabytes of data, “but about 8 terabytes are missing and are considered unrecoverable”.

One terabyte is equivalent to around 1,000 gigabytes of data. This corresponds to around four laptops with 256 gigabytes each, around 250,000 photos or 400 hours of HD video streaming.

The city said the files consisted of pictures, videos, audio, case notes and other items collected by Dallas police. Files that have not been opened for at least six months will be moved to longer-term, cloud-based storage as part of an archiving process, the city said. The data loss occurred while the files were being moved between the servers.

“The metadata for each data file was retained, however,” the city said. “Each of these record ‘stubs’ provides the file name, file size, last accessed date, source of origin and other information so that the city can maintain a verifiable record of every deleted data file.”

Eddie GarciaEddie Garcia(Lola Gomez / photographer)

Dallas Police Chief Eddie García made a brief statement to the Dallas Morning News describing the incident as unfortunate and directing other questions to the city.

“We worked with the city [Information and Technology Services] to find out what happened, why and how to make sure it doesn’t happen again, ”said García. “I’ve spoken to DA Creuzot and we will work through any issues that arise.”

Creuzot said all prosecutors had been instructed to check with detectives to see what evidence they uploaded to the prosecutor’s evidence system and what evidence, if any, is missing.

“It is possible that much of the missing evidence was found before the 5th

The city said the data files deleted from the archive are considered “permanently deleted and unrecoverable,” but added that Dallas police may have previously uploaded the original files to their case management system.

“The city is conducting a full audit of all files subject to archive deletion and will provide a full impact assessment when the review is complete,” Dallas officials said in a statement.

State law requires prosecutors to hand all evidence against a suspect to defense lawyers, even if the prosecution does not intend to use it. Defense attorneys will want to know if their cases are among those with missing data because information and its lack of information can influence a judgment or determine whether a case is even on trial, said Amanda Branan, president of the Dallas Criminal Association of Defense Lawyers.

“It can affect the outcome of these cases if the missing data includes mitigating information,” said Branan.

Defense attorney Danielle Uher provided an example in a shooting death case pending against her. A witness can be heard in a body camera carried by a patrol officer who says the victim was holding a gun, which could support a self-defense claim by her client. But the patrol officer didn’t write a report, so Uher only found out about the witness’s testimony because she watched all of the video footage from the body camera that was made available to her. If the video had been deleted, she wouldn’t know.

“Maybe they have videos with exculpatory evidence and no one will find out because they’re gone,” Uher said.

If affected cases are identified, attorneys may request that cases be dismissed or the results waived.

Attorneys at the Dallas County Public Defender’s Office are concerned that the defendants at the center of some of the lost data cases have already resolved their cases, Richardson said. Your office receives up to 30,000 new cases every year.

In an affected case, if the defendant has already made a plea deal or has been convicted, the defense can ask the judge to overturn the sentences, Richardson said. Lawyers provide advice and the defendants make their decisions based largely on the information given to them, so defense strategies may have been different had more information been available, Richardson said.

Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins speaks to the media about the current state of the coronavirus delta variant outside the Dallas County Health and Human Services building in Dallas on Tuesday, August 10, 2021.  He also talked about the differences between himself and Texas Governor Greg Abbott when it came to a mask assignment.  (Tom Fox / Dallas Morning News)

To prevent data loss from happening again, the city introduced a requirement that file transfers be performed by two people instead of one to ensure that no steps are missed. It also changed the configurations so that deleted files in memory are now sent to a recycle bin for 14 days before deletion becomes permanent.

The city said it is also “doing a top-down assessment” to improve the system’s capabilities.

Councilor Cara Mendelsohn, deputy chairwoman of the city council’s public security committee, said in a prepared statement that she was “very surprised” to learn of the data loss, especially since the news did not come from the city council.

Mendelsohn said she would add a briefing on the situation to an upcoming meeting of the council’s committee on government performance and financial management. She said she spoke to the city’s chief information officer, William Zielinski, and that “he is doing everything in his power to address the situation regarding data recovery and updated IT policies.”

“There is no city policy that requires reporting critical IT incidents to the city council and the public, and I am looking to develop and adopt such a policy to improve transparency and accountability,” Mendelsohn said.

Cassandra Jaramillo contributed to this report.

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