MNPD says some camera footage is missing from at least 180 arrests or citations

Some of the footage from Nashville police’s body-worn and in-car cameras was lost, in what the department says was a server transfer error. In total, MNPD says videos from at least 183 arrests or citations, as well as 543 other incidents over the last year were incomplete.

The issue was discovered two months ago when the district attorney’s office requested a video from MNPD. They found “a gap” in the footage, and alerted MNPD.

MNPD says that’s when they reached out to the vendor of the camera systems, WatchGuard, and began to look into the issue internally.

An MNPD analysis of videos from 14 randomly selected body cameras found that most had video loss of at least one second — though the department declined to give further details about how much footage was missing. The department says the problem seems to have taken place when the videos were transferred from an upload server to a storage server.

Jill Fitcheard of the Community Oversight Board says this was the first her department has heard of the issue, despite MNPD’s knowledge of the problem since May. She says she should have been notified sooner because missing footage could impact current investigations into police misconduct.

“Clearly, MNPD should be more transparent with any problems they experience with technology,” Fitcheard says, “especially as we move towards having Automated License Plate Readers in our city which bring about their own set of accountability issues.”

The district attorney’s office says it is alerting defense counsel in impacted cases involving prosecution.

MNPD started using the WatchGuard systems back in 2020, with full deployment of the cameras in 2021. The cameras themselves only save video footage for about 72 hours, so it won’t be possible to recover the missing videos. But the department says that, in many cases, another officer was on the scene, which provides supplemental footage.

MNPD says they’ve been in communication with WatchGuard, and its parent company, Motorola. In a statement, Motorola Solutions says they are working with MNPD to “understand and resolve the issue.” WatchGuard body cameras are used in police departments across the country.

Update: This story has been updated to include a statement from Motorola Solutions, addition figures from MNPD and a statement from the district attorney’s office.