Police investigated a complaint that a Police officer had accessed the complainant’s records on the Police database and shared private details with members of a third-party agency the complainant belonged to.

Police investigated and found that the officer not only accessed the complainant’s information, but also information relating to other members of the agency and passed on some of the information to agency staff.

Police also found that the officer had made an excessive number of checks (totalling approximately 2,954) of the Police system while off duty and accessed information relating to himself, a family member, and other members of Police.

When interviewed, the officer was unable to recall the reasons for many of the checks he made, due to the passage of time, but he believed most of the checks were work-related. The investigation identified no clear work-related reasons and concluded that the checks were unjustified and that there was an on-going conflict of interest over a period of years which the officer never disclosed to their supervisor.

While Police found the threshold for criminal prosecution was not met, it was determined that there had been several breaches of the Police policy, values and the code of conduct. A disciplinary process was undertaken and Police found the officer’s actions amounted to serious misconduct. The officer no longer works for Police.

It is understood that Police have notified the Office of the Privacy Commissioner about these breaches of privacy.

IPCA 22-14171