REVEALED: South Yorkshire Police body cam footage was deleted in these 126 cases
South Yorkshire Police body cam footage was deleted in these 126 cases, The Star can reveal.
More than 96,000 pieces of South Yorkshire Police body worn video (BWV) footage were found to have been deleted in error, it recently emerged.
And now we can reveal the full list of the crime types the footage related to.
South Yorkshire Police was reprimanded by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) following their investigation into the deletion into a total of 96,174 pieces of BWV footage, the findings of which were published last week.
Their investigation found South Yorkshire Police did not have the “appropriate technical and organisational measures in place to keep the evidence secure.”
Following the release of the ICO’s findings, Sally Anne Poole, Head of Investigations at the ICO, said: “This incident highlights the importance of having detailed policies and procedures in place to mitigate against the loss of evidence.
“People rightly have high expectations that our police forces and services, which protect us, also protect the personal information they hold.
“There is a lot to be learned from this incident and I encourage police forces and services and other organisation using this type of technology to check and make improvements where they find potential flaws”.
The ICO’s investigation report states that South Yorkshire Police has “not been able to provide a definitive explanation as to how the deletion occurred, however, SYP has explained that it believes the data was deleted from the storage grid in error.”
The lost footage covered a time period running between July 2020 and May 2023, with 126 “included criminal cases.”
Of those, “only three cases were impacted by the loss,” the ICO report states.
A South Yorkshire Police spokesperson told The Star that the three cases “impacted by the loss” relate to cases of assault against police officers and one case of affray.
The force has provided a list of crime types the 126 cases involved:
- Assault: 38
- Affray: 3
- Burglary: 3
- Controlling & coercive behaviour: 4
- Damage: 5
- Dangerous driving: 7
- Driving whilst disqualified: 1
- Drugs offences: 21
- Harassment: 4
- Drive OPL (over the permitted limit) drink/drugs: 10
- Offensive weapon: 4
- Robbery: 2
- Sexual offences: 11
- Theft: 2
- Threats to kill: 1
- Section 18 and Section 20 wounding: 6
- Kidnap: 1
- Cases with legal services: 3
A South Yorkshire Police spokesperson said “all victims of crime have been informed” of BWV loss relating to their case.
They noted, however, that some of the 126 criminal cases included within the deletion are “victimless,” such as driving matters.
Of the three “affected” cases, South Yorkshire Police states one may have progressed to the first court hearing if BWV had been available.
“However, as there was no additional independent evidence to prove the offence, progression to prosecution stage was already uncertain,” the ICO investigation report states.
Speaking following the publication of the ICO’s investigation report, Deputy Chief Constable Sarah Poolman said: “We do not underestimate the damage any loss of data can do to our communities’ trust and confidence in us.
“Whilst the Information Commissioner’s Office has welcomed the steps taken by us in the immediate aftermath, such as trying to retrieve the footage and informing those affected, we are sorry that any victim of crime faced this challenge whilst going through the criminal justice system.
“We did, of course, work closely with the Crown Prosecution Service to minimise the impact on criminal proceedings and judicial outcomes and, whilst even one is too many, it is believed only three cases were potentially detrimentally affected by the loss of body worn video footage.
“We have already put processes in place to safeguard our data. Of the seven recommendations made by the ICO, all have been implemented.”
The ICO report explains that at the end of each shift, officers’ BWV footage was uploaded and stored to a central hub which could be accessed and managed, along with all of SYP’s digital evidence, via a secure system.
In addition, at the time of the deletion, a “third party was responsible for Digital Evidence Management (DEMS), a software solution that allows police departments to manage all digital evidence in one secure central hub.”
The ICO investigation report states: “Following an upgrade of DEMS in May 2023, the system was struggling to process data from the Storage Grid, so a workaround was put in place to store it locally.
“Therefore, at the time of the deletion, the primary storage of BMV footage was by local disk on the application server, although the data was still available on the Storage Grid for viewing by the users.
“On 26 July 2023, the third party was carrying out data transfer activities in regard to the movement of data from the local drives onto the Storage Grid storage location as part of the overall support arrangements provided as a supplier of the DEMS application.”
“On 7 August 2023 an IT manager at SYP identified that the file storage on the Storage Grid was very low which indicated files were missing from the Storage Grid. On further investigation it was found that 96,174 pieces of original BWV footage had been erroneously deleted from The Storage Grid.
“On 11 September 2023 SYP conducted a digital forensic investigation, the results of which found that there had been a mass deletion of data (BWV footage) which had taken place on 26 July 2023. “
The ICO is the independent regulatory office for legislation including the Data Protection Act 2018; the General Data Protection Regulation and the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003. It is a non-departmental public body which reports directly to Parliament.