No penalty for officer who deleted video fi les
A Columbus police officer won’t be punished after deleting approximately 100,000 cruiser video files from an internal server last month, according to an internal report.
“I concur with the findings ... that this was not an intentional act and that no rules were violated,” wrote Columbus Police Chief Kim Jacobs in a report. Jacobs declined to comment for this story.
Investigators found that the 48-year-old officer did not violate any policies, which is why The Dispatch is not naming him. Records show he has worked at the Columbus Division of Police for more than 20 years.
However, officials say the incident underscores the need for the system to have better safeguards.
Sam Orth, Columbus Department of Technology director, said the city plans to require supervisor approval before system changes are made, put a testing environment into place that would allow changes to be tested before they are made and expand the time frame for video files to be kept.
On March 8, the officer attempted to reclassify thousands of video files that were under a previous classification system that had up to 18 categories.
The division went to a much simpler three-category system where videos were classified as evidence, not evidence or permanent. Rather than converting all of the files to the new classification, the settings defaulted to a standard 90- day retention schedule. As a result, thousands were automatically deleted from the server.
Cruiser video normally is stored on the division’s server for two years unless it is saved for a case, according to policy. Each night, about 2,500 files are deleted when the timetable to store them expires.
“I noticed a significant drop in stored video. 98,119 total video decline. That is not a typo!” the officer said in a March 13 email to a sergeant and technical services bureau manager after making the discovery while on vacation.
Initially, members of the Technical Services Bureau weren’t sure what caused
the mass deletion, according to internal emails. The officer thought the files might be gone because of a server outage.
In an interview with investigators, the officer said he checked the manual before making the changes. He did not seek support from Panasonic Arbitrator, the dash-camera system provider. City officials also said they wanted to talk with Panasonic about incorporating a warning before files are deleted.
There were two server outages last month. When asked how outages could affect the system, Orth said there were “safeguards which hold the video files in the dashboard cameras until they can be offloaded.” He didn’t explain whether those safeguards have limits.
In the report, Jacobs voiced concerns about outages and storage. “This is another problem that can have a detrimental effect because when it is out, cruisers aren’t able to upload the videos and if that goes on for awhile it can cause recording new video impossible and results in longer uploading times when it starts back up,” she wrote. “While this particular incident was a
mistake we made unintentionally, there are other serious issues that DOT will have to address due to their oversight of the technology infrastructure.”
Orth said an assessment of the number of files that need restoring has not been completed.
As of this past week, at least one criminal case has been affected by the deletion.
The Franklin County public defender’s office requested dash-camera video from a 2015 drugpossession case when Lawrence Jefferson was stopped by two officers.
The video was requested in late February, but a public defender staff member said the video was never received. Police say they already have copied the video and sent it. When records staff at the Division of Police went to pull another copy, it was found to have been among the deleted files.
The public defender’s office did not respond to a request for comment. It’s unclear whether Jefferson’s attorney will try to file for a motion for dismissal based on the missing video.