Some Dallas City Council members say they’re still in the dark about what happened to a large amount of deleted police evidence.
“We don’t know any more than the public at this point,” said council member Jaynie Schultz, who was elected in June. “As a new member, I understand why I may not have been informed, but I look forward to understanding why my colleagues who have been reelected are not more informed.”
A 12:30 p.m. joint meeting will take place today after council members spoke in executive session about legal and security ramifications for roughly two hours on Wednesday.
The meeting is between two committees that deal with public safety and government and financial issues. Among the city officials scheduled to attend are City Manager T.C. Broadnax, Assistant City Manager Jon Fortune, Chief Financial Officer Elizabeth Reich and Chief Information Officer Bill Zielinski.
The four were among a few top officials who knew that an IT employee deleted 22 terabytes of police photos, videos, audio, case notes and other files from the police department’s network drive in early April during a data transfer. But none of them told the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office, the City Council or the public for months.
In a memo sent late Wednesday to the City Council, members Adam McGough and Cara Mendelsohn said they expect officials to “provide an explanation for the continued lack of communication with the mayor, City Council and district attorneys’ offices about the incident.”
They want a review that includes updates on city data management strategies, a more detailed timeline of events, and more specifics on what is still missing. McGough chairs the public safety committee, and Mendelsohn is the chair of the government performance and financial management committee.
Council member Paul Ridley, who sits on the government performance and financial management committee, said city officials are hopeful the data can be recaptured from its original sources, like camera or video footage. The data disappeared after it was transferred to the cloud, so it may be possible to restore it.
“We just don’t know the extent of that process and how successful it will be,” Ridley told The Dallas Morning News. “It’s too early in the process to know.”
Council member Paula Blackmon noted one council member was told about the lost police evidence four months ago, Jennifer Staubach Gates. But city executives knew Gates, who was the chair of the public safety committee at the time, would be leaving office in June due to term limits.
Blackmon said she wants to know why that was seen by the city’s top administrative officials as enough notification to elected officials.
“I think there’s going to be a better understanding of where we are,” Blackmon said. “We only got briefed in closed session on a very narrow scope of things, so I think we will hopefully be able to understand things a little better after the public meeting.”
She also said she hopes the meeting ends with her elected colleagues and residents having more confidence in how the situation is being addressed moving forward.
Information about the missing police evidence, linked to cases investigated before July 28, 2020, was not publicly revealed until last week, when District Attorney John Creuzot said his office asked the city about missing criminal case files.
Broadnax said in a recent memo that the deleted evidence was accidental and that all but eight terabytes of the files have been recovered and his executive team take full responsibility for not saying anything sooner.
The employee who deleted the data hasn’t been identified by the city and Broadnax said disciplinary action is pending for the worker.
Most laptop hard drives can range in memory from about half a terabyte to two terabytes.
Broadnax said in a memo last Friday that it could take up to 45 days for the city’s Information and Technology Services Department to search through laptops, cameras and other devices to try to recover whatever they can.
The DA’s office, police and the city have not said how many Dallas County cases could be impacted. Parts of Dallas also stretch into Collin, Denton, Kaufman and Rockwall counties. It’s unclear which cases, if any, are affected in those counties.
A man charged in a 2019 killing was released after the DA’s office asked for a trial delay to determine if the deleted data contained evidence in his case.
Dallas County prosecutors don’t immediately expect any other people being released from jail while awaiting trial.
