Oakland police camera gaffe: 25 percent of videos deleted

An Oakland officer issues a ticket as he has his new wearable video camera clipped to his uniform (green square) as he stops someone for expired license plates in Oakland, Calif., on Wednesday, September 15, 2010. less An Oakland officer issues a ticket as he has his new wearable video camera clipped to his uniform (green square) as he stops someone for expired license plates in Oakland, Calif., on Wednesday, September 15, ... more Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 8 Caption Close Oakland police camera gaffe: 25 percent of videos deleted 1 / 8 Back to Gallery

A quarter of all video clips captured by Oakland police body-worn cameras during stops and investigations were accidentally deleted nearly two years ago when city employees installed a software upgrade, the former head of the camera unit said Tuesday.

The revelations came from Oakland police Sgt. Dave Burke during his testimony in the murder trial of two men charged in the July 2013 killing of Judy Salamon, 66, several blocks away from her East Oakland home.

Alameda County prosecutors said she was shot in the head after the defendants, believing she was following and recording them, became angry and tried to take her phone.

Though body-worn camera footage is a minor issue in the case, Burke’s testimony provided a glimpse into Oakland’s handling of a nascent technology that has been adopted around the country as a tool of police accountability.

“Nothing should have ever been lost from the system,” Burke said in court, later adding, “The settings were set to never delete.”

An Oakland police spokesman, Officer Marco Marquez, said Tuesday afternoon that he did not know exactly how many video files were deleted. But he said the department had not “discovered any cases that have been affected by this incident.”

The videos were deleted in October 2014 when city information technology workers tried upgrading the Police Department’s computer system that stores dozens of terabytes of the body-worn camera footage.

Instead of hitting “preserve everything,” the IT employees mistakenly checked a box marked “preserve,” Deputy District Attorney Butch Ford, who is prosecuting the murder case, explained Tuesday outside court.

A month later, Burke said, officers realized there was a problem when they searched for a video and couldn’t view it. Metadata revealed that 25 percent of all videos that had been captured since the start of the body-camera program in 2009 were wiped out. A backup system had been purchased but hadn’t been set up, Burke said.

Videos that had been specifically marked as evidence or copied to external hard drives were retained, Ford said. He said the mass deletion had not significantly affected any cases.

City officials have credited body-worn cameras with reducing use-of-force incidents and excessive-force complaints in the city. The videos can be used in criminal and civil court cases and can implicate or exonerate an officer accused of wrongdoing.

Bay Area civil rights attorney John Burris, whose work focuses on police misconduct, said the missing footage could pose a problem in some cases. If an officer’s conduct is being questioned, an attorney might want to view past interactions involving the officer, but wouldn't be able to get the footage because of the deletions.

Burke was asked to explain the deletions in court because Annie Beles, the attorney for defendant Mario Floyd, has said that footage taken from officers who arrived at the scene of Salamon’s killing would contradict witness statements.

Beles said the footage would likely show that no trash bins were knocked over in the street, which is notable because Ford, the prosecutor, has argued that Floyd threw a trash bin at Salamon as he demanded her phone minutes before co-defendant Stephon Lee allegedly fired three shots, killing her.

Though officers activated body-worn cameras when they arrived at Fern Street near Fairfax Avenue, no footage from the July 24, 2013, slaying could be found because of the reported data erasure one year later.

The missing footage was a footnote in the trial. In closing arguments that began Tuesday, Ford focused on statements witnesses gave to police and DNA evidence.

The DNA found on Salamon’s fingernails matched Floyd’s to a high degree of certainty, as the unique genetic profile could only be found in 1 person in 160 trillion, Ford said. The DNA may have been deposited, he said, when Floyd came back for Salamon’s phone after Lee shot her. The prosecutor also highlighted that witnesses’ fear and a culture that demonizes “snitches” made some testimony during the trial inconsistent.

“We don’t necessarily know what they were doing before,” Ford said of the defendants, “but whatever they were doing, Ms. Salamon started recording. Maybe it wasn’t very smart to do in Oakland. It ultimately cost her her life.”

Darryl Stallworth, Lee’s defense attorney, argued that no physical evidence was found tying Lee to the shooting. No gun was recovered, and no DNA or fingerprints were linked to Lee, the attorney said.

Both he and Beles sought to discredit the prosecution’s eyewitnesses, highlighting their criminal histories and mental problems as well as their distance from the shooting. The DNA found on Salamon’s fingernails could have another explanation, Beles said, such as tracing to Floyd’s saliva, given that a witness had seen him spit in the woman’s direction.

Jury deliberations were expected to begin Wednesday.

Kimberly Veklerov is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kveklerov@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @KVeklerov