After a woman in Florida experienced a “ chance abbreviated encounter ” with a police officer in a parking service department last year , authorities say the officer showed up at her parents firm in an effort to see her again . The char then file a complaint , and the section says it discovered the officer had been misusing a police database to target women to appointment and have sex with for years .
The officer , 36 - twelvemonth - old Leonel Marines , who had worked for the Bradenton Police Department in Florida for 12 year , used his access to target at least 150 charwoman for romantic encounters , according to law , ABC News report . An audit of Marines ’ searches in the Driver and Vehicle Information Database showed he had made “ several hundred questionable database queries of women , ” Bradenton Police Chief Melanie Bevan said at a press conference on Thursday .
The internal audit signal that the names Marines was look up were predominantly names of women , Bevan say , and that he mostly accost Latino women , many of which did n’t verbalize English .
grant to Bevan , the datum Marines gleaned from these “ questionable ” queries was n’t being used for law employment . “ Instead , he was using it in a change of way via societal media , cold telephone calls , visits to their homes under the guise of being there for constabulary business , you name it , to strain and get dates with these cleaning woman , ” she order , harmonize to ABC .
Disturbingly , this was not the first time Marines was accused of abusing the database in this way . According to the Bradenton Herald , Marines was antecedently investigated for misusing criminal justness information in 2012 after allegedly indicate up at a woman ’s home unprompted on several occasion . After that investigation , he was reportedly suspended for three day without earnings .
Bevan said that the section has closed its latest home investigating , encounter Marines in administrative violation of “ gross wrongful conduct to include abuse of criminal Justice Department selective information , violation of our record security policy and sexual activity on duty . ” He was reportedly put on administrative leave-taking and quit in October . While the national investigation has now been shut , Bevan said that the FBI is leading a “ very alive and open criminal investigation . ”
Marines would not be alone in abusing a powerful data tool for nefarious mean . In 2016,the Associated Press foundthat law enforcement employees had been fired , suspend , or resigned more than 325 time between 2013 and 2015 for misusing databases . And former Mississippi County , Missouri sheriff Cory Hutcheson was charged for using a phone - tracking service to surveil a judge and police officers , the New York Times reportedlast twelvemonth .
Even Marines ’ reported choice of dupe is not unique . employee at bothFacebookandUberhave allegedly used information only available to them through their jobs to stalk women . And in 2013 , the National Security Agency ’s internal guard dog revealed that at least a dozen employees used government surveillance toolsto spy on current or former lovers .
When confronted about looking up partner and exes , some NSA employeesreportedly claimedthey had performed the searches for praxis , and one said he did it to see his girlfriend was n’t “ involve ” with any foreign government officials , among other fly-by-night excuses .
The vulgar train of thought among all of these instances of impermissible surveillance is that the aver offenders used licit systems available to them through their line . There ’s a lot of care and precautionary standard taken to ensure sensitive entropy is n’t exploit by cyberpunk and third party . What ’s clear with these abuse of data is that it ’s just as easygoing — if not easier — to overwork that data from the inside . All it takes is one enormous surveillance shaft and a few bad doer .
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