A former Dallas IT worker fired after deleting millions of police files last year while trying to move them from online storage didn’t have enough training to do the job properly, according to an independent investigation of the incident.
Despite his job primarily being focused on working with Commvault, the software company the city contracts with for cloud storage management, the former city technician only received training on the software twice since 2018, said a report analyzing the incident released this week to city officials by law firm Kirkland & Ellis.
The technician, who isn’t named in the report, told investigators with the firm that he deleted the achieve files without verifying if copies of the data existed elsewhere and “did not fully understand the implications of his actions.” The report said there’s no apparent evidence the technician deleting the files did so maliciously or was criminally motivated, but rather it was due to his “flawed” yet “sincerely-held understanding” of how the software worked.
The worker has been the only person fired related to the deletion of more than 20 terabytes or more than 8 million achieve police photos, videos, audio, case notes and other items. The majority of the data involved evidence gathered by the family violence unit.
According to the report, the missing files haven’t had a significant impact on the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office to prosecute active cases. Uncertainty about what files are actually lost could slow the pace of some prosecutions and have other effects.
“While it may be unlikely that any archived data would be needed for an active case, this does not mean that the lost data did not hold potential current or future evidentiary value,” the report said. “Since family violence offenders have a high recidivism rate and often commit crimes of violence, the lost archived evidence may be useful in future cases or be needed to maintain a conviction in the appeal of a case.”
The report comes four months after the city approved hiring Kirkland & Ellis to look into what led to the files being deleted. The review was led by former U.S. Attorney Erin Nealy Cox, who is a partner at the firm.
She plans to discuss the findings in the report during a city council committee meeting on Tuesday.
The latest review follows Dallas’ IT department releasing a 131-page report in September about the incident that laid out systemic issues in the department and how the city stores electronic files. The report found fault with the employee, but also pointed out that the department lacked basic policies and procedures for backing up archived data as well as oversight, reviews and staff training.
That report said at the time that nearly 17,500 Dallas County District Attorney’s Office cases may have been impacted.
