A POLICE officer has pleaded guilty to unlawfully using police computer systems to read his colleagues’ personal data.
Warwickshire Police officer Norman Stephens, 47, admitted four charges of using a computer to enable unauthorised access to a program or data at Leamington Magistrates Court today (Wednesday February 13).
When an affair with a colleague came to an end, Stephens continued to contact her – and an investigation was launched when the colleague reported this to her supervisor.
It was discovered Stephens had accessed police computer systems to search personal data of colleagues. No policing purposes were identified for the searches and he offered no explanations.
Stephens, who has served with Warwickshire Police for over 28 years, was sentenced to a 12 month community order and ordered to do 100 hours of unpaid work.
Sean Kyne from the Crown Prosecution Service said: “While it has not been established what the motive was for accessing the personal information, this was in clear breach of the law.
“Stephens would have known that his actions were unlawful. He conducted the searches on police systems for personal reasons and not policing purposes.
“The CPS takes offences of this nature very seriously as it is important that officers can be trusted with personal information of the public.”