This morning, the Associated Press published results of their investigation into the unauthorized access of law enforcement databases by police officers. They found egregious abuses including stalking, harassment, and selling of personal information.
Unspecified discipline was imposed in more than 90 instances reviewed by AP. In many other cases, it wasn’t clear from the records if punishment was given at all. The number of violations was surely far higher since records provided were spotty at best, and many cases go unnoticed.
Among those punished: an Ohio officer who pleaded guilty to stalking an ex‐girlfriend and who looked up information on her; a Michigan officer who looked up home addresses of women he found attractive; and two Miami‐Dade officers who ran checks on a journalist after he aired unflattering stories about the department.
“It’s personal. It’s your address. It’s all your information, it’s your Social Security number, it’s everything about you,” said Alexis Dekany, the Ohio woman whose ex‐boyfriend, a former Akron officer, pleaded guilty last year to stalking her. “And when they use it for ill purposes to commit crimes against you — to stalk you, to follow you, to harass you … it just becomes so dangerous.”
Law enforcement discipline and self‐monitoring is notoriously opaque and varies jurisdiction to jurisdiction, so it is impossible to know how often these abuses happen. While it would be unfair to say that most police officers violate these laws and rules, it is unfortunately not uncommon either. Police departments should regularly audit the logins and access to sensitive personal data to protect the privacy of individuals and maintain the integrity of their own agencies.
You can read the whole AP story here. You can scroll through many of the cases Cato’s National Police Misconduct Reporting Project found that document the phenomenon on Twitter here. You can follow the project on Twitter at @NPMRP or on the web at PoliceMisconduct.net.
This is a version cross‐posted from a piece at PoliceMisconduct.net.
