PUBLISHER'S NOTE: All my instincts tell me that this is story is 'huge' - a feeling I had - and articulated on this Blog - when the first stories about Annie Dookhan and Sonja Farak (and the respective coverups of their criminal acts ) began eking out. Stay tuned!
Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog.
---------------------------------------------------------
PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "The deletion has cast into question the fate of an unknown number of criminal cases. On Thursday, Mayor Eric Johnson said he’d been blindsided by the news and was stunned that numerous top leaders, including City Manager T.C. Broadnax, knew about the data loss about four months before he and Creuzot did. The week culminated with a judge authorizing the release of a murder suspect after it was revealed that evidence in his case may have been among the lost files."
----------------------------------------------------------
PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: "Jonathan Pitts, 36, is the first defendant who is known to possibly be affected by the data loss. He’s accused of fatally shooting Shun Handy during an argument Jan. 28, 2019. State District Judge Ernie White was forced to grant Pitts’ release because state law mandates a person’s release from detention when prosecutors aren’t ready at the time the case is supposed to go to trial, Pitts’ lawyer George Ashford III said. Prosecutor Clinton Stiffler asked the judge for more time to audit the evidence against Pitts, according to court records. Stiffler had emailed lead detective Scott Sayers early Thursday asking whether Pitts’ case was affected by the data loss. Sayers said that he had no way to know what data was lost until the department completes its audit and that the timeline of the audit is uncertain. It’s unknown whether evidence in Pitts’ case is missing. It’s still possible Pitts could go to trial."
--------------------------------------------------------
STORY: "Here’s what to know about the recently revealed deletion of Dallas police evidence files," by Staff, published by The Dallas Morning News on August 15, 2021.
SUB-HEADING: "The full scope of the data loss, which could affect an unknown number of criminal cases, hasn’t unfolded. What is known is that the district attorney was kept in the dark for months, as was the mayor — who wants answers.
PHOTO CAPTION: "Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson (top left) has called on City Council members to get to the bottom of the deletion more than four months ago of 22 terabytes of police investigative files. Johnson said he only learned of the debacle Wednesday after defense attorneys were notified by Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot (top left) — who said he wasn't told until Aug. 6. At least five city leaders (bottom from left) knew about the loss soon after it happened, city officials say: City Manager T.C. Broadnax, Assistant City Manager Jon Fortune, Police Chief Eddie Garcia, former council member Jennifer Staubach Gates and Chief Financial Officer Elizabeth Reich."
GIST: "Last week brought a barrage of troubling news for Dallas City Hall, starting Wednesday when District Attorney John Creuzot notified defense lawyers that electronic files containing police investigative information had been lost while being migrated to a computer server.
The deletion has cast into question the fate of an unknown number of criminal cases.
On Thursday, Mayor Eric Johnson said he’d been blindsided by the news and was stunned that numerous top leaders, including City Manager T.C. Broadnax, knew about the data loss about four months before he and Creuzot did.
The week culminated with a judge authorizing the release of a murder suspect after it was revealed that evidence in his case may have been among the lost files.
Here’s a recap of developments in the unfolding missing-data debacle.
In a nutshell, what happened?
Creuzot notified defense lawyers in a memo Wednesday that, according to city officials, 22 terabytes of investigative files were lost as an IT department employee was moving them from a cloud-based storage system to a local server. (One terabyte is about the same as four laptops containing 256 gigabytes each, or about 250,000 photos or 400 hours worth of HD video.)
The deletion occurred after the employee, who hasn’t been identified, “failed to follow proper, established procedures,” the city said in a written statement.
Fourteen terabytes were recovered, but eight more “remain missing and are believed to be unrecoverable,” Creuzot said he was told. The files included photos, video, audio, case notes and other items Dallas police gathered, the city said.
The data involves cases that were investigated by detectives and that occurred before July 28, 2020, he said.
City officials learned of the problem April 5, Creuzot said, but only told the district attorney’s office on Aug. 6 after prosecutors asked why pending cases were missing files.
Mayor only learned on Wednesday:
On Thursday, in a memo to City Council members Adam McGough and Cara Mendelsohn, Johnson said he was “blindsided” by the data-loss revelation, and he called on the two to schedule a special public meeting to get answers.
McGough chairs the council’s Public Safety Committee, and Mendelsohn leads the Government Performance and Financial Management Committee.
Johnson said he also was stunned to learn that numerous city officials knew about the data loss early on.
“This is a very serious matter. … The people of Dallas deserve answers,” he said.
Who was informed at the time?:
Assistant City Manager Jon Fortune told The Dallas Morning News on Thursday that the city’s IT department told Police Chief Eddie García and police command about the data loss in April.
He said that he was informed after García was told and that he then notified Broadnax. Soon after, while officials still believed “the data could be recovered,” former City Council member Jennifer Staubach Gates was briefed on the situation, Fortune said.
Late Thursday, Gates — who chaired the Public Safety Committee at the time but left the council in June — told The News that she learned of the deleted files from Chief Financial Officer Elizabeth Reich.
Why weren’t more alarms sounded?
In a written statement to The News on Thursday, the city said it didn’t alert the district attorney’s office sooner because “it was our intention to fully evaluate whether the data was recoverable or not [and] to know the full extent of the problem if any.”
Fortune told The News that no elected officials besides Gates were informed in April because “we really didn’t have an understanding of the magnitude of what it was.”
“At the time, we believed the data could be recovered and at that point it was still being assessed and determined what the next level of notice should be,” he said.
Gates said that after Reich told her about the file deletions, she assumed other elected officials were being notified and that she didn’t know until last week that only she had been informed.
She also said: “My concern was that an investigation be done and that this wasn’t an intentional act. I was told an internal investigation was done and the person that made the error was held accountable.”
How many cases are involved, and how might they be affected?
So far, the number of cases that were affected is unknown. McGough said it could be up to 40 days before the full scope of what’s missing is known.
“They’ve done an initial assessment, and now they are doing an audit to find out what specifically each piece was,” he said.
Also unclear is the potential impact on victims and defendants who are awaiting trial.
Creuzot said prosecutors have been instructed to verify with detectives what evidence they uploaded to the district attorney’s system and whether any is missing.
Chief Public Defender Lynn Richardson said lawyers in the Dallas County Public Defender’s Office are worried the accused in some of the affected cases already have resolved their cases.
She said attorneys are combing through cases to see whether they can pinpoint suspects who were affected. Once cases are identified, lawyers could ask judges to dismiss cases or overturn judgments.
Why is a murder suspect going to be released?
A murder suspect who was set to go on trial last week will be freed on a personal recognizance bond — meaning he doesn’t have to pay bail — because prosecutors weren’t ready for the trial following the city’s loss of data.
Jonathan Pitts, 36, is the first defendant who is known to possibly be affected by the data loss. He’s accused of fatally shooting Shun Handy during an argument Jan. 28, 2019.
State District Judge Ernie White was forced to grant Pitts’ release because state law mandates a person’s release from detention when prosecutors aren’t ready at the time the case is supposed to go to trial, Pitts’ lawyer George Ashford III said.
Prosecutor Clinton Stiffler asked the judge for more time to audit the evidence against Pitts, according to court records. Stiffler had emailed lead detective Scott Sayers early Thursday asking whether Pitts’ case was affected by the data loss.
Sayers said that he had no way to know what data was lost until the department completes its audit and that the timeline of the audit is uncertain.
It’s unknown whether evidence in Pitts’ case is missing. It’s still possible Pitts could go to trial.
What steps did DPD take after the loss?
In a department-wide email sent April 19, García alerted employees about the missing files.
“All departmental personnel are asked to please check to see if any files or folders are missing from their network drives,” the email said. Included were instructions on how to restore items.
In a written statement to The News on Wednesday, García called the incident unfortunate and said police officials are working with the city’s IT department “to ascertain what occurred, why and how to ensure this doesn’t happen again.”
What’s being done to address the problem?
The city said that to prevent data losses from happening again, it now requires that two people, not one, handle file transfers to ensure no steps are missed. It also said it has changed configurations so deleted files go to a recycle bin for 14 days before permanent deletion.
The city also said it was doing a “top-to-bottom assessment” to improve its systems and processes.
Mendelsohn said she wants to consider a policy that would require serious IT incidents to be reported quickly to the City Council and the public. The city has no such policy now, she said.
On Thursday, the city said that the data deletion was being investigated and that officials “will determine what disciplinary action is appropriate for any involved employees.” Fortune declined to say whether anyone has been disciplined.
When and how will the City Council meet?
McGough and Mendelsohn told The News on Thursday that they were working to figure out when a public meeting could occur and what the format would be.
Fortune, meanwhile, told The News that plans are in the works to brief the council Wednesday during executive session. That would bar discussions from being open to the public — a necessity, he said, because the lost evidence involves security and legal issues."
The entire story can be read at:
