More than 400,000 fingerprint, DNA, arrest and offence records may have been wiped from police databases following a technology blunder, The Times has learnt.A letter to chief constables today
BBC News
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Police investigations have been compromised by an error that led to hundreds of thousands of records being deleted from UK-wide databases, according to a letter seen by the BBC.
The National Police Chiefs Council said 213,000 records were deleted - more than the 150,000 first reported.
This resulted in a couple of near misses for serious crimes when trying to identify an offender, it said.
The Home Office has said it is assessing the impact of the mistake.
Data including fingerprint, DNA, and arrest histories was wiped from the Police National Computer (PNC) - which stores and shares criminal records information across the UK - after being inadvertently flagged for deletion.