Cops visit school of 'wrong person's child,' mix up victims and suspects in epic data fail

2024-03-01 12:40

The UK's Information Commissioner's Office has put the West Midlands Police on the naughty step after the force was found to have repeatedly mixed up two people's personal data for years.

Britain's data watchdog says the force "Incorrectly linked and merged the records" of the individuals that share the same name and date of birth on multiple occasions during 2000, 2021 and 2022.

The unnamed pair were both victims of crime, although one had been a suspect was well, "Meaning WMP didn't make a clear distinction between the personal information of victims and suspects of crime, a breach of the Data Protection Act 2018," the ICO said in a statement today.

The series of unfortunate events led to inaccurate personal data being processed and culminated in a litany of mistakes, including officers going to the wrong address when trying to find a person "Regarding serious safeguarding concerns." Officer also "Incorrectly" visited the school of a wrong person's child.

"WMP didn't take steps to rectify the error quickly enough and there was a failure to stop the inaccurate linking of records reoccurring, both breaches of data protection law.?" said the ICO. The data privacy watchdog found WMP hadn't provided regular data protection training or done enough to make employees aware of their role in reporting inaccurate personal information.

The force has since launched Data Quality Policy, and launched the "Think before you link" campaign - so catchy that maybe the cops will even remember it.

News URL

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