Investigations & evidence · dash and body-worn cameras
Most disputes end the moment the right thirty seconds is put on a screen. That requires the clip to be on the card still, to open, and to reach the right desk while it is worth something. Erased and damaged footage comes off SD cards, and off the memory soldered inside a camera, then goes back in a form Devon and Cornwall Police or an insurer can work with.
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| What shows up | What that points to | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Clips erased from the card | Flash holds what was written until something replaces it | Get the card out |
| The camera stayed on for the drive home | Every circuit of the loop removes a little more | Switch the camera off |
| Playback shows a black screen | A write interrupted midway, or a card near the end of its life | Stop using that card |
| Locked event files nothing will open | The maker's own wrapper, which only that camera reads | They get unwrapped and converted |
| A bodycam broken or soaked through | The memory chip usually outlasts the housing | Video comes off the chip directly |
| A solicitor or loss adjuster needs it formally | Originals, a playable MP4, hashes, bench notes | Part of every job here |
Whatever arrives is booked in under a case number on the day it reaches the bench. An engineer then works out the actual fault, and that part is free. You get a plain answer on what can come off the drive and what cannot, followed by one price in writing. Nothing further happens until you have read it and agreed.
Nothing on your media is opened, exported or altered. The card — or the memory inside the camera — is copied sector by sector, and everything that follows happens on that copy, including the unlocking of protected event files. The card returns in the state it arrived.
Erased clips are carved back out of the image. Damaged ones need a header and an index built for them before any ordinary player will look at them. Flash is unforgiving in exactly one respect: go on using the card and there is less there to find.
Video of a driving offence reaches Devon and Cornwall Police two ways: through the national dash cam portal, or by the force's own upload page. Send it inside days rather than weeks — fourteen days is the whole allowance when a notice of intended prosecution must be served. Insurers get the bundle every CCTV job here produces: the original files, an MP4 anybody can play, a hash for each, and a note setting out the method.
Thinking it over costs you nothing. Everything the drive gave up is listed for you before any invoice exists, and the bill only follows your go-ahead. Files travel back on media bought in for your job, with return carriage paid at this end, and the case stays on the bench until you confirm they open on your own computer.
The deadline nobody can shift: on a range of road-traffic offences the keeper of the vehicle must be sent a notice of intended prosecution, and it has 14 days to get there. Most road-traffic offences then run under a six-month limit on prosecution. Individual forces set their own cut-off earlier still, so check what Devon and Cornwall Police ask for before you upload. Day twelve and the clip is still worth submitting. Day twenty, usually not.
Nothing was done to the card until a copy of it existed, and every step after that ran on the copy. The clip the insurer had asked for went overnight; the picture data behind it did not. The file was rebuilt from the copy, hashed and exported, and it reached the insurer inside a week. A deletion is not an overwrite, and the dashcam card settled which one this had been.
Generally, provided it bears on the issue and can be shown to be authentic. Three things carry that: a file in the condition the camera left it, metadata that has not been touched, and a written record naming who held it and when. Weight is the court's decision.
There are two. Upload through the national dash cam safety portal, which routes each submission to the force responsible for that road, or go direct to Devon and Cornwall Police. Either will want a signed witness statement and the registration of the other vehicle. Do it early: some offences require a notice of intended prosecution to be in the registered keeper's hands within 14 days.
Seldom. Deleting flags the space as available again and leaves the picture data exactly where it lay. On an ordinary flash card the clip remains until the loop returns to that spot, or until a few more journeys are written over it. Remove the card, leave the camera switched off, and in most cases it survives.
It is. Anything a body-worn camera captures of an identifiable person counts as personal data, and UK GDPR therefore applies. You need a lawful basis, signage wherever it can reasonably be placed, a retention period that can be justified, and storage that is properly secured. Evidence is treated exactly as CCTV is: the original retained, copies hashed, every hand-over logged.
Every minute the recorder runs, the clip you need moves closer to being written over, and your deadline has not moved. Start it here. The first look is free, and what you tell us goes no further.