RECORDS from the police database have been lost by the Home Office and a former Cumbrian chief constable has spoken out about his concerns. Home Secretary Priti Patel has been urged to make a statement after the Home Office accidentally lost 150,000 police records during routine ‘housekeeping’. It is feared that the data loss will mean criminals can walk free as evidence on suspects will not be available on the Police National Computer. However, the Government has been quick to reassure the public that data lost is unessential information on closed cases. The National Police Chief’s Council, the Home Office and law enforcement’s partners are working at pace to retrieve the data.
Human error blamed for wiping hundreds of thousands of police records
Hundreds of thousands of fingerprint, DNA and arrest history records were accidentally wiped from police databases because of human error and defective code , according to the policing minister. PUBLISHED: 04:26, Sat, Jan 16, 2021 | UPDATED: 08:58, Sat, Jan 16, 2021
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Police and UK Home Office officials were scrambling to recover the data but there are fears it has been permanently erased in what one former chief constable described as a risk to public safety .