A misconduct hearing held by South Wales Police at the Waterton Centre in Bridgend over three days this month found constable Sonia Lewis guilty of gross misconduct for repeatedly accessing police computer systems without a policing purpose between March 2020 and October 2021.
Details of the Misconduct
The allegations included that on July 6, 2020, whilst on a rest day, she searched for her sister, an ex-partner of hers, and that ex-partner's sister. An aggravating factor was that she shared some of the information about the ex-partner with her then partner. On July 15, 2021, she searched for her sister’s then partner. Other searches related to other family members, the streets where they lived, and the street where she herself lived. On August 4, 2020, she conducted a search of a person believed to be in dispute with a family member.
PC Lewis accepted that she accessed police systems as alleged and without a policing purpose. She did not accept that she shared information in the manner described but admitted making mention of information gleaned from a record on July 6, 2020. She accepted her conduct breached the Standards of Professional Behaviour and amounted to misconduct, but denied breaching the standard of honesty and integrity and maintained it did not amount to gross misconduct.
Panel's Findings
The Appropriate Authority maintained that the repeated instances of deliberately accessing confidential systems without a policing purpose, over an extended period approaching a year, amounted to gross misconduct. The panel concluded that PC Lewis completely disregarded the sanctity of a core tenet of policing in relation to data access and security, treating police data as something she had a right to use for her own purposes. The panel also found she had not been completely open and honest.
In her statement, PC Lewis explained that on July 6, 2020, she received messages from an unknown male and spoke to him on the phone. She said: 'I did not know who the person was. It looked like the male was from Essex. Initially did not know if the messages were genuine. At the time I was unaware of my sister being with anyone and did not know she was 'dating'. I was in a panic. I was crying and upset by what the male was telling me. I did tell someone I was going to check to see if I could find out what was going on.' She added that she did not consciously relay what she found but said out loud what she was seeing due to panic and anxiety.
Sanction and Barring
Misconduct hearing chairman Ian Arundale QPM wrote: 'Gross misconduct is proved in this case and for this type of offence it is clear that dismissal is likely to follow.' The panel considered that police officers have access to very private information and must be trusted completely. It concluded that dismissal without notice was justified and directed that PC Lewis's name be placed on the police barred list under the Police Barred List Police Advisory List Regulations 2017.
