Seattle police lose thousands of dash cam videos
Aug 30, 2016, 5:33 PM
Seattle patrol cars have cameras that take videos from the perspective of the dash board, such as this image taken from a Seattle patrol car. (Seattle Police Department)
(Seattle Police Department)
A tech bug is giving the Seattle Police Department quite a headache. The glitch resulted in the loss of thousands of Seattle dash cam videos.
A total of 2,283 dash cam videos from July 13-14 have been lost. The issue was discovered on July 15 and technical experts immediately began attempting to recover the videos. The bug at the core of the lost data involved a glitch in converting the dash cam videos into long-term storage — the video was sent, but it was never saved.
“We were ultimately able to recover about half of the videos that were missing – about 3,000 videos,” said Chief Technology Officer Michael Mattmiller. “In the end, we have approximately 2,200 videos that could not be recovered.”
About 25 percent of the lost video data relates to investigations — a total of 537 videos.
“All of their investigations stemming from those two days will still go forward, but unfortunately we won’t have video to support those investigations,” said Seattle Police Chief Kathleen O’Toole.
According to the Seattle Police Department:
The lost DICV recordings also included 89 arrests, 138 traffic citations, 95 oral warnings, 35 police street “Terry stop” contacts, 60 crisis contacts, and five incidents involving low-level type-one uses of force.
