Yellowknife lawyer thanks lucky stars, CKLB after sensitive court case DVDs found at city dump

Peter Harte from Facebook

A Yellowknife criminal defence lawyer is counting his blessings after a CKLB employee discovered a box full of sensitive DVDs, some belonging to him, at the city’s landfill site.

Peter Harte thanked CKLB administrator Liselle Cook profusely after she recently found the box containing about 20 DVDs and CDs in the scavenger area of the dump and brought it to CKLB’s news department.

A reporter took them to Harte to get his opinion of the security breach and ironically, some of the DVDs were from his previous cases.

He was particularly concerned because one of the DVDs showed graphic crime scene photos of a Northern homicide that Harte had worked on.

Harte and Cook went back to the dump and searched to make sure there were no other materials left behind.

Harte says the material was part of a package that he had contracted a Yellowknife shredding company to dispose of.

The company, which CKLB is choosing not to name at this time, says a new employee didn’t follow company protocols to destroy the DVDs.

Its owner has assured CKLB and Harte that appropriate measures have been taken to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

This story comes on the heels of another published report in the city that a box of personal files were found on the side of School Draw Avenue.

The territory’s privacy commissioner may look at that security breach.

 

 

About the Author

John McFadden
John has been in the broadcast journalism industry since the 1980s. He has been a reporter in Yellowknife since 2012 and joined CKLB in January of 2018. John covers the crime and court beat as well as reporting on other areas including politics, business, entertainment and sports. He won seven national community newspaper awards while he was a journalist with Northern News Services Limited (NNSL). John worked in Ontario before coming North including stints as a TV sportscaster in Peterborough and senior news writer for CBC and CTV in downtown Toronto.