lapdstorage.jpeg
Unse­cured files next to a park­ing garage stair­case | Photo by the Los Ange­les Police Pro­tec­tive League

Remem­ber last Octo­ber when the LAPD’s union busted the depart­ment for stor­ing con­fi­den­tial files in com­mon spaces like hall­ways and park­ing garages with no secu­rity (see pho­tos here)? Doc­u­ments with social secu­rity num­bers, ser­ial num­bers, search war­rants, arrestee book­ing infor­ma­tion and more was there for the tak­ing. Even some boxes were marked “Evi­dence” and “Ana­lyzed Evidence.”

Word spread through the media and the police com­mis­sion quickly asked for a report “doc­u­ment­ing the cir­cum­stances that lead to the prob­lem along with the Office of Oper­a­tions’ cor­rec­tive and pre­ven­tive mea­sures that were put into place,” wrote Chief Char­lie Beck in a memo to the com­mis­sion with that report attached (.pdf), which was final­ized in December.

Unse­cured files were found in three stations–Northeast, South­west and Wilshire–with most records sched­uled to be destroyed. How­ever, files at North­east were sup­posed to be, and even­tu­ally were, sent to a secured stor­age facility.

Rea­sons for the screw-up was mainly space capacity–when new records came in, they ousted older records, which should have been picked up for stor­age or destruc­tion. “Had the Areas adhered to the yearly records reten­tion sched­ule and shipped older doc­u­ments for destruc­tion the num­ber of records retained by the Areas would not have exceeded their stor­age capac­ity,” explained the report. “How­ever, it is impor­tant to note that Area Records Department-wide are oper­at­ing with a num­ber of vacant posi­tions that undoubt­edly con­tributed to this problem.”

The solu­tion? Area Records Coor­di­na­tors and the office in charge of records reten­tion will work closely to make sure the job is done right from now on.

http://laist.com/2010/01/07/unsecured_confidential_lapd_file_is.php

Com­pli­ments of File­Man Research

Cary McGov­ern — FileMan