SEATTLE — More than 2,000 Seattle Police Department dash-cam videos from two days last month disappeared -- and could not be recovered.
The Police Department blames a technical glitch that has since been fixed for the loss of 2,283 digital in-car video recordings -- called DICV -- recorded on July 13 and 14.
Since then, department and IT workers for the City of Seattle have been working to make sure it doesn't happen again, according to the Police Department.
Chief Kathleen O’Toole said all the criminal cases will move forward, but without the video as evidence.
“To be honest, most police departments in this state don’t have ICV anyway, and they proceed with cases every day,” O’Toole told KIRO 7.
The lost video includes 89 arrests, 138 traffic citations, 95 oral warnings, 35 on-the-street contacts called "Terry Stops," 60 crisis contacts and five incidents involving low-level use-of-force by officers, according to the department.
Police Department spokesman Sgt. Sean Whitcomb said the citizens involved in those five use-of-force incidents have not been notified of the loss of video evidence in their cases, but none have filed a use-of-force complaint, he said.
With the roll-out of department-wide body cameras expected to begin at the end of the year, Whitcomb acknowledged how this loss of video evidence would concern people.
“There absolutely has been an impact to public trust in regards to this data loss,” he said. “We want to assure the public that storing data, managing data, everything we have, is of paramount importance.”
O’Toole and Whitcomb both said the department didn’t notify the public about the data loss until its investigation was complete.
“We want people to know there’s nothing sinister about this,” O’Toole said. “This is a technology problem that has been addressed, but because we’re under consent decree, because there are issues around public trust in policing, we thought it was important to be particularly transparent and just get it out there.”
Cox Media Group
