[BreachExchange] Dallas City Council committee votes to hire firm to investigate Dallas PD over data loss

[Terrell Byrd]

https://www.fox4news.com/news/dallas-city-council-committee-votes-to-hire-firm-to-investigate-dallas-pd-over-data-loss

DALLAS - Members of a Dallas City Council committee voted to hire an
outside firm to independently investigate the Dallas Police Department.

The audit is the result of two data loss events that resulted in missing
files for more than 17,000 cases.

RELATED: 17,000 criminal cases affected by Dallas PD data loss

Committee members spent a lot of time questioning the city's chief
information officer about the data loss.

They expressed their concern and frustration over the lack of management
and oversight.

The committee also voted to hire an outside law firm to audit the data loss.

A 131-page report, put together by the city of Dallas’ ITS risk management
department, detailed just how much crucial Dallas PD data was lost during
an incident back in March, when a now-fired city employee deleted the files.

"I found it shocking and stunning to read," Dallas City Councilwoman Cara
Mendelsohn said.

"The report confirms that 20.677 terabytes of archived data, totaling 8.7
million individual data files, were permanently deleted, impacting data
collected by Dallas Police Department," city of Dallas chief information
officer Bill Zielinski said.

That data included audio, video, case notes, and other items collected by
DPD as part of ongoing criminal investigations, many of them involving
family violence.

Members of the city’s Ad Hoc Committee on General Investigating and Ethics
were briefed on the report Thursday.

"I don't think we can ever fully apologize for the cases that don't move
forward because of these errors," Mendelsohn said.

The report also points to inadequate management controls within the
information and technology services department.

"There's an ongoing law enforcement review and assessment being conducted
into the data loss," Zielinski said.

The FBI is leading that investigation into the former employee.

As a result, the Dallas Police Department told the committee it could not
elaborate further.

"I reached out to one of the supervisors of the FBI yesterday, and right
now, they're still in their assessment phase," Dallas PD Deupty Chief
Albert Martinez said.

The report listed 13 targeted recommendations to improve ITS processes and
management control to guard against future incidents, including
establishing a citywide data governance and data management program.

"How do we fix this? How do we move forward? Are these recommendations
enough?" Dallas City Councilwoman Paula Blackmon asked.

Committee members voted to recommend to city council the hiring of an
outside law firm to audit the data loss.

"Specifically, I'm going to want to know how the data was deleted,"
Mendelsohn said.

And made a statement to the public.

"To everyone who is suffering from this and the entire public, we do
apologize," Dallas City Councilwoman Jaynie Schultz said.

The committee voted to recommend the hiring of the Kirkland Ellis Firm to
do the audit.

The firm was one of three to pitch its plan to the committee.

The Dallas City Council will have the final say.
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