At least 17,000 cases are now missing with the recent data loss incident within the Dallas Police Department, full reported expected soon

Dallas, TX – As we already reported multiple times, Dallas Police Department lost huge amount of data in two separate incident that happened in the last few months.

Although specialists are working hard to recover as much data as possible, it looks like that majority of the lost data can never be recovered.

As the time passes, officials with the Dallas Police Department are slowly acknowledging what cases and what kind of data was lost in the two incidents.

The investigation shows that at least 17,000 separate cases were affected and the data tied to those cases is probably lost forever.

The first incident happened last March when nearly 1 million files were deleted while IT worker tried to move and transfer the data on another server.

While investigators were trying to determine what happened in the incident, they found out that another, much bigger incident happened after the first one when at least 5 million files were deleted the same way.

Attorney Russell Wilson is a former Dallas County prosecutor.

“So the absence of that information is going to impact some of these cases,” he said. “And we could potentially see cases just thrown out altogether, right? I certainly would expect that there will be some cases that the prosecution cannot go forward.”

What prosecutors fear the most is the fact that among that data important evidence might be lost needed for convicting criminals.

“In some instances, it may have even taken away the ability to justify the initial arrest to begin with,” he said.

An outside firm is also conducting an investigation. Another city council committee will hear a presentation on what was lost and possible root causes on Thursday.

The city says of the 17,000 criminal cases affected, 1,000 cases are prioritized by the DA’s office.

“You’ve got to get more specifics,” Wilson said. “I think you would expect the defense to argue that the state can no longer meet its burden of proof.”