A technological failure led to the destruction of 2,283 videos recorded by patrol cars of police conduct over the course of two days in July, according to Seattle police.
This is the latest in a series of deletion incidents for the department’s in-car video system. There’s an ongoing issue of dropped video frames. In 2011, KOMO and watchdog Eric Rachner uncovered the wholesale loss of dashcam recordings.
The department said the “glitch” involved the failure of a server, designed for long-term storage of the footage, to capture videos from a temporary central server before they were deleted.
Mattmiller said he didn’t know how many hours of footage were deleted.
“There’s nothing sinister about this,” said Chief Kathleen O’Toole. “This is a technology glitch here. Because we’re under a consent decree, because there are issues of public trust in policing, we thought it was important [to be transparent and get this out there].”
