OM suspects ex-cop of unauthorized search of police database

The Public Prosecution Service demands a 240-hour community service against a police officer who for years searched the police database hundreds of times without permission. The OM also demands that the agent is no longer allowed to do his job for five years.

The former chief officer of the The Hague unit is said to have looked up data in the police information system more than thirteen hundred times between January 2015 and June 2017. Among other things, he looked at information about people and looked up license plates. The man often printed the information and took it home, says the OM. The public prosecutor has demanded a 240-hour community service against him for computer breaches and violation of official secrecy. The officer also wants the man to be banned from exercising public office for five years.

The National Criminal Investigation Department started a criminal investigation into the man’s behavior in February 2017. The ‘large number of queries’ he made in the system was striking. Not only did he extract a lot of information from the system, he also did so outside working hours. That happened over five hundred times. The man also looked at information that was completely irrelevant to his work, for example about his girlfriend.

The suspect himself says that he suffers from ptsd. He is said to have a ‘compulsive need for control’ and to have been treated for it. That would be the reason he requested so much information from the system. The ex-cop says that he himself ‘will calm down’. The case will be pronounced on October 15.