[Herald DB]
[Herald DB]

Police deleted surveillance footage recorded during a gambling raid, and the suspect who denied the charges was acquitted.

Judge Kwon So-young of the Seoul Northern District Court's Criminal Division 5 acquitted a man in his 40s, identified only as A, of gambling charges on July 9.

A, a foreign national, was booked by the Seoul Jungnang Police Station and indicted after allegedly exchanging chips worth 900,000 won ($605) at an illegal Texas Hold'em gambling den in Nowon-gu, Seoul, in December 2023, and then gambling there.

A maintained that he had exchanged chips out of curiosity but never sat down at a game table to gamble. At the time of the raid, he had been near a smoking area on the opposite side of the game tables, and he personally filmed the investigators conducting the search and seizure on his mobile phone.

Believing that police footage from the raid would show he had not participated in gambling, A requested the footage to use as evidence at trial.

Police did not provide it. When A filed a freedom-of-information request, he was told the footage "no longer exists because it was destroyed immediately after being recorded."

A memo report later released by police stated that "proving the charges is possible through the full confessions of those engaged in gambling," and that the footage "was entirely destroyed because it was of no use as investigative material — most of it consisted of suspects shouting and using profanity rather than having evidentiary value."

A Jungnang Police Station official said the department had determined the footage was not evidence because "the gambling scene was not captured in the video at the time," adding that "we judged the charges could be proven even without the footage, through statements from gambling den employees and chip-exchange records."

The court reached a different conclusion. The only direct evidence that A had actually gambled was the testimony of gambling den employees, and the court found that testimony difficult to accept as credible.

A particularly decisive factor in the acquittal was that the employees reversed their earlier statements in court, saying they could not remember clearly.

A short video A had recorded on his mobile phone during the raid was admitted as evidence at trial. When his defense attorney presented the footage and continued questioning, the employees were reported to have contradicted their prior statements.

A told Yonhap that "if only the police footage had existed, I would not have had to endure two years of trial," adding, "I cannot understand by any common sense why such important evidence was deleted."


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