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.
鈥淲e were ultimately able to recover about half of the videos that were missing 鈥� about 3,000 videos,鈥� said Chief Technology Officer Michael Mattmiller. 鈥淚n the end, we have approximately 2,200 videos that could not be recovered.鈥�
About 25 percent of the lost video data relates to investigations — a total of 537 videos.
鈥淎ll of their investigations stemming from those two days will still go forward, but unfortunately we won鈥檛 have video to support those investigations,鈥� said Seattle Police Chief Kathleen O鈥橳oole.
According to the Seattle Police Department:
The lost DICV recordings also included 89 arrests, 138 traffic citations, 95 oral warnings, 35 police street 鈥淭erry stop鈥� contacts, 60 crisis contacts, and five incidents involving low-level type-one uses of force.
