The City of Dallas discovered more police evidence is missing. Here’s what we know

Updated at 6:09 pm with additional details.

According to emails received by The Dallas Morning News on Monday, city officials discovered that an additional 15 terabytes of evidence from the Dallas police force and files from the city secretary’s office were missing during the ongoing investigation into a massive erroneous data wipe.

In connection with the lost evidence, the city also fired an IT employee on Friday, the emails said.

The discovery brings the total loss of files as of Monday to about 22.5 terabytes. The investigation began this month after Dallas County prosecutors learned that an IT staff improperly moved police evidence from a storage cloud to a local server, resulting in a permanent loss of approximately 7.5 terabytes in April Information led.

City officials have said they intend to complete the exam by September 30th. It is unclear what types of crimes or how many cases they are. The city also said it is possible the investigation could reveal further missing evidence.

“The city continues to assess the impact of the compromise on its operations, whether data recovery specialists can recover data from the physical devices it was stored on or other systems, and whether other city-wide systems are affected,” spokeswoman Janella Newsome said Monday. “As the city continues this review, it may discover that additional files are missing.”

An audit team that checked the city’s “entire data archiving and backup process” identified the 15 additional terabytes, according to an email sent to the city council by Elizabeth Reich, the city’s chief financial officer. It is unclear when the newly discovered 15 terabytes were deleted. Dallas police said Monday that the additional 15 terabytes were apparently deleted from the other 7.5 terabytes at a different time.

The test also showed that the IT employee had an “error pattern,” wrote Reich in an email.

“Additional information gathered during the internal audit reveals a pattern of error on the part of the employee that justifies and justifies the termination action,” she said.

The employee did not respond to requests from The News on Monday. When he was reached last week before his release, he declined to comment.

Dallas Police were investigating the former IT worker, who was not named outside of the city’s internal documents, on possible charges of tampering with government files related to loss of evidence and ruled that his action, according to records received from The News was not a criminal.

“It is alleged that the employee did not follow the procedures and deleted data from the DPD archives,” said records from the public integrity department.

The Public Integrity Department began its investigation on April 26th and closed it on June 9th without notifying the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office of the missing evidence. The city only notified District Attorney John Creuzot of the loss of evidence earlier this month.

The record does not include detailed notes or a narrative of what investigators uncovered. The news has asked the city to provide documents with more details about the investigation.

The exam

In response to questions from the mayor, councilors and journalists, City Manager TC Broadnax and Chief Information Officer Bill Zielinski said about the first batch of missing data that the former employee had converted 35 terabytes of archived police files from online storage into a physical city drive as of Dec. March.

It should take about five days to transfer the information. But the employee “failed to follow the established procedure” and eventually deleted 22 terabytes from the city’s network drive. More than 14 terabytes have been recovered from this batch.

The audit team, made up of city technical staff and outside experts, identified the additional 15 terabytes last week and also discovered files from the city secretariat’s office. It is unclear how much of the newly discovered 15 terabytes contains police evidence compared to files from the city secretariat’s office.

15 terabytes correspond to about 5,000 hours of HD video or about 4 million photos or 100 million pages of Microsoft Word documents. And 22.5 terabytes correspond to about 7,500 hours of HD video or about 6 million photos or 150 million pages of Microsoft Word documents. It is also unknown whether any of the newly identified 15 terabytes are recoverable.

Police chief Eddie García referred questions about the loss of evidence to officials of the public information services on Monday. He told city council members on Aug. 19 that crimes against human beings, such as rape and murder, were most likely not affected by the first amount of data that was lost. But the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office wouldn’t go as far as saying that their attorneys are reviewing every single case that the Dallas Police Department has received.

“We are not currently relying on global statements from anyone. This seems like a fluid situation and we will look at each case and make sure we have it all in either case, ”said Creuzot on Monday.

Dallas police also said Monday they were no longer sure that violent crimes against humans weren’t affected by the newly discovered loss of evidence.

“Working with our City of Dallas Information Technology Systems Department, the department is evaluating the impact of the newly discovered lost data,” said Dallas Police Sergeant Warren Mitchell. “This lost data is not believed to have been part of the initial process that took place in April 2021. Until there is more information from this review, this would be ” [be] It is premature for the department to make a statement about the possible effects. “

Implications in court

Crimes against people are a high priority for a prosecutor, said Messina Madson, former acting district attorney for Dallas County. These cases are typically the most violent crimes and would involve extensive investigations with lots of evidence, she said.

These also carry the longest sentences. Every defense attorney will want to independently review every scrap of evidence, said Madson, now a defense attorney at Madson Castello.

“It questions the integrity of all cases investigated during the period,” Madson said.

State law requires prosecutors to hand over all evidence against a suspect to defense lawyers, even if the prosecution does not intend to use it. Defense lawyers 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 in court.

Defendants who have already completed pleadings or found guilty can challenge their convictions if they believe their cases are among those with lost evidence.

The new development is compounding a backlog of cases caused by the COVID-19 pandemic that stalled jury trials, Madson said.

A murder suspect was released from Dallas County Jail earlier this month because prosecutors said on the day of his trial that they need more time to ensure his case is not among those involved. Last week, the Dallas County Public Defender’s Office called for independent reviews of 18 homicides.

Creuzot’s August 11 memo to defense lawyers informing them of the mistake that started public awareness. García and Broadnax said they did not alert Creuzot or the city guides because they did not realize the extent of the loss and believed the IT department could still recover files.

Although Madson said the defense attorneys are in an “uncomfortable position” to have to review each of their cases, she praised Creuzot for raising the alarm quickly.

“If we are ever to believe in the criminal justice system, complete transparency is the right response,” she said.

The author Cassandra Jaramillo contributed to this report.

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