The Dallas Police Department (DPD) has lost 22 Terabytes during a data migration project.
The Dallas County Criminal District Attorney has disclosed that “multiple Terabytes of DPD data had been deleted during a data migration of a DPD network drive.”
“Approximately 14 Terabytes of data were recovered, but approximately 8 Terabytes remain missing and are believed to be unrecoverable.”
The accidental deletion – the details of which weren’t shared – occurred over the course of several days between March 31 and April 5, and came to light after DPD users noticed certain files – including those related to pending cases – were missing.
The DA, however, was only notified in early August, and has asked the DPD for a date range of affected cases to narrow down the scope of potentially impacted cases. The exact number of cases affected is unknown.
“As we understand it today, this data loss applies to cases with offense dates before July 28, 2020,” reports the disclosure. “This issue does not affect “direct file” cases (i.e., cases without a detective, such as DWI, Evading Arrest, and Unlawful Possession of Firearm by a Felon).”
CBS Dallas Fort Wort reports that murder suspect Jonathan Pitts was due to stand trial on Thursday but has instead been released on bail after his case file data was lost.
In his motion, the prosecutor said “the potential data has been deleted from his k-drive.”
Pitts’ attorney, George Ashford, said Friday that he was told some of the evidence in their case may have been mistakenly deleted and that the detective won’t know until an audit is completed. Pitts will have to wear an ankle monitor.
Earlier this year the UK’s Home Office managed to lose 400,000 criminal evidence records from a Fujitsu-provided mainframe backup appliance, though it's not clear how many records were able to be restored.
