Dallas police are at risk of being in violation of evidence laws after officers improperly stored more than 52,000 digital records, according to interviews...
Dallas police are at risk of being in violation of evidence laws after officers improperly stored more than 52,000 digital records, according to interviews and internal communications obtained byThe records may include digital evidence for court cases, police said, which could mean that information wasn’t provided to lawyers, as required by state law. The Richard Miles Act, a 2021, mandates police agencies verify that they turned over all evidence when filing cases with prosecutors.
Police did not say whether any of the 52,000 records may also include evidence for a murder, use-of-force cases or other serious offenses like violent crime. Just last week, a Dallas murder case was thrown into jeopardy because evidence wasn’t stored properly. Arevealed 18 videos or photos were deleted in accordance with the department’s retention policies because the lead detective did not save them. A state district judge is deciding whether to dismiss the case as a result.
Also in September 2021, a top police official said the department didn’t have a universal policy for retaining documents, videos and other files or checks to make sure existing policies are adhered to. Dallas police said the department would Asked why the policies did not catch the uncategorized videos, police spokeswoman Kristin Lowman said most files in the server were categorized and since the audit, “steps have been taken to ensure further compliance by department members, and to tag the files appropriately.” She did not detail those steps.
She expressed concern about DPD’s attempts to re-tag and categorize all of its records, particularly since the footage may date back several years.“When they say, ‘We’ll go back and tag,’ immediately, I’m curious as to what does that mean and how is that different than what they would have expected to have been done in the first place?” Wattley said.
due to the massive amount of files that need to be audited and tracked — and possible breakdowns in oversight and maintenance of the system, such as what occurred in Dallas in 2021.
In her case, officers did categorize their videos — although some categorized them as “calls for service” when they should have been “investigative evidence,” Corey Parker, an officer with the DPD digital media evidence team, testified during the hearing this week. The categories carry different lengths of retention.
“These audits are important, and we need to ensure that everyone’s complying,” García said. “There’s many ways to conduct discipline, from training to other types of action.”
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