Dallas Police Department lost terabytes of data that could impact some ongoing cases
DALLAS - The Dallas Police Department lost at least 22 terabytes of data in April while it was migrating to a new system.
It recovered about 14 terabytes, but there could be missing data that affects some ongoing cases.
The city of Dallas said the data loss was not the result of a ransomware attack.
To give some perspective, one terabyte holds at least 250,000 photos and more than 6 million documents stored as office files.
Dallas County District Attorney John Cruezot said he's not sure how many individual cases are affected, but said this data loss applies to cases with offense dates before July 28, 2020.
He released the following statement:
"I have become aware that there was a data loss from the Dallas Police Department’s network drive. My office is now working with the DPD to determine how many cases are affected by the City’s data loss in April. It is possible that much of the missing evidence had already been uploaded to this office’s data portal prior to April 5, which would have a limited impact to cases. At this time, it is too soon to estimate how many cases will be affected and what the impact will be on those individual cases. Chief Garcia and I have been in constant communication on this over the past few days and are committed to ensuring justice is served on each case."