Um, hold on. The quote that spurred the article is from a city attorney, not their IT department head. Lower down in the article is a quote from their IT department head:

former Department of Housing Preservation and Development chief enterprise architect Robert Pesner disputed the NYPD’s account. In an eight-page sworn declaration, he wrote the NYPD’s argument “refers only to a user interface, rather than a database,” and “it is technologically feasible to retrieve much of the data sought from PETS by running queries directly on the underlying DB2 database.” Pesner added it is common practice for system admins to bypass UI limitations and run SQL queries directly on databases, so the NYPD should have no problem doing so.

And while the author of the article is correct here:

However, that did not necessarily address the question of whether the NYPD actually does not have a backup of one of its most sensitive databases.

that doesn't actually accuse or deny the existence of a backup. Just that it's possible that it doesn't exist, because the author apparently didn't want to look for it.

While I think the NYPD is trash and can totally believe that our city government's incompetence extends to their database solutions, we need some decent reporting first.