Detective admits accessing data

Det Con Bruce Bartlett has been a police officer for 29 years

A police detective who accessed information about his neighbours from a police computer has been given a conditional discharge and fined £600.

Det con Bruce Bartlett had been in dispute with neighbours in Goodwick, near Fishguard, Pembrokeshire, over a boundary, Swansea crown court heard.

Bartlett admitted unlawfully obtaining data on Vernon Smart and three charges of attempting to obtain data.

Judge Mark Furness said Bartlett had been "reckless" rather than malicious.

Chris James, prosecuting, said the Bartletts fell out with Mr Smart and his wife Deborah as soon as the Smarts moved to their home in April 2005.

Letters were exchanged and the Smarts became suspicious when Bartlett, aged 52, suddenly began writing to "Vernon Lewis Smart", the court heard.

They made a formal complaint and John Evans, the head of data protection within the Dyfed Powys police force, investigated usage made of the police national computer.

Personal dispute

He discovered that in May and June 2006 Bartlett had accessed the computer on four occasions, pretending he had stopped Vernon Smart in his car and wished to run a check on him.

The information gleaned, Mr James told the court, did not help Bartlett in his dispute "but that was entirely fortuitous".

Bartlett's intention had been to discover something about the Smarts that would give him an advantage in what was a personal dispute and nothing to do with his duties as a police officer.

Bartlett had originally denied the charges and entered his guilty pleas on the morning of what should have been his trial.

Bartlett's barrister, Tom Crowther, said he had become suspicious of the Smarts and thought that they were attempting to deceive people.

But he now accepted that he should have passed his suspicions on to other officers and not investigated himself.

He said Bartlett was a specialised firearms officer and the head of a rapid intervention unit.

Misguided

Mr Crowther said that, following the guilty pleas, Dyfed Powys police may take action against Bartlett.

Judge Furness said the Smarts were entitled "to feel deeply offended" at Bartlett's misuse of the police national computer in an attempt to learn something about them.

But no such information was actually obtained "and so no harm was done", he said.

The judge described Bartlett as having been misguided rather than malicious but added it was essential the public had confidence that information about them was protected.

Bartlett, who has worked with the police for 29 years, a conditional discharge for 12 months and ordered him to pay £600 costs.

A Dyfed-Powys Police spokesman said: "The public have an absolute right to believe that police information systems are properly used and that no employee uses or abuses their position to obtain information for their personal use.

"Any identified misuse of police systems will not be tolerated by the organisation and a thorough investigation will be undertaken to identify if any criminal or misconduct offences have been committed."

He added that the force will now consider misconduct issues arising from the Bartlett's case.