The UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office has reprimanded the South Yorkshire Police (SYP) after the force deleted over 96,000 pieces of body-worn video (BWV) evidence.

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.

Following an upgrade in May 2023, the secure system began to struggle processing BWV data and a local drive workaround was put in place.

In August 2023, SYP identified that its BWV file storage was very low, and further investigation found that 96,174 pieces of original footage had been deleted from its system.

The following month, it was found the deletion had taken place on 26 July 2023 and included the loss of data relating to 126 criminal cases. It’s been said only three of the cases were impacted by the loss.

Of those three cases, SYP 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.

Prior to the deletion, 95,033 pieces of BWV footage had been copied to a new system that SYP was implementing but, due to poor record keeping, SYP remain unable to confirm the exact number of files deleted without copies made.

The ICO‘s investigation found that SYP ultimately did not have the appropriate technical and organisational measures in place to keep evidence secure.

This includes poor record keeping, not identifying the security risk in relation to transferring personal data between IT systems, and delaying the formulation of IT backup policies and not escalating to senior management when flaws were discovered.

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“This incident highlights the importance of having detailed policies and procedures in place to mitigate against the loss of evidence,” said Sally Anne Poole, head of investigations at the ICO.

“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”.