The Edmonton Police Service has apologized for a security breach that saw personal information of some staff and volunteers sent to a man in the United States.
David Henderson, a former CBS News correspondent, who now works as a crisis and strategic communications advisor, told CTV News he’s trying to draw attention to the e-mails he had received from EPS officials – even though he says he has no connection to Edmonton.
Henderson says he’s received e-mails from the EPS Victim Services Unit containing personal information of some staff and volunteers for several months – and he’s been trying to get them to stop.
EPS released a statement to CTV News in response to the issue Monday, thanking Henderson for bringing the issue up with officials:
“From what we have been able to determine thus far, at some point Mr. Henderson's consultant contact information / email was added to a VSU email account. When a staff member went to email a volunteer with a similar name / email address - the email address autocompleted to the consultant's email rather than the volunteer's email address.
“Although Mr. Henderson's contact information was removed from the account after he initially contacted EPS, the email still autocorrected to his email address, and he was emailed again.”
Officials said the emails were found to contain on-call crisis response shifts and contact information for staff and volunteers with the specialized unit.
EPS said Henderson, and affected volunteers and staff had been contacted, and said the information in the e-mails had been contained.
Police are also investigating to find out why security was breached.
With files from Brenna Rose
