Former Warwickshire Police detective convicted after misusing police computer systems - The Coventry Observer

Former Warwickshire Police detective convicted after misusing police computer systems

Coventry Editorial 14th Feb, 2019 Updated: 14th Feb, 2019   0

A FORMER detective with Warwickshire Police has been convicted after misusing police systems.

Norman Nigel Stephens, of Hatton Park, illegally used the force’s incident management, intelligence and number plate recognition systems in May and June last year.

The 47-year-old pleaded guilty at Warwick Crown Court to four counts of causing a computer to perform a function to secure or enable unauthorised access to a program or data.

Stephens was given a 12 month community order and ordered to do 150 hours unpaid work and pay £270 in costs.




The court heard Stephens had served with the force for more than 28 years.

When an affair with a colleague came to an end he continued to contact her. The colleague reported this to her supervisor which initiated an investigation into Stephens’ activity.


It was discovered he had accessed the police computer systems to search personal data of colleagues. No policing purposes were identified for the searches and no explanations were presented by Stephens’ as an explanation for searching the personal data.

He was arrested last June and subsequently suspended from his position as a detective constable in the force’s child exploitation team. He resigned from the force in November

Asst Ch Con Alex Franklin-Smith said: “Our officers and staff have access to a lot of sensitive information and we expect them to use systems appropriately and with the utmost integrity.

“We carry out regular checks to ensure officers and staff accessing information on force systems have a legitimate policing purpose for doing so and where they don’t, we take robust action.

“Stephens’ behaviour fell well below what we expect from our officers and staff. As we have seen in this case, when officers and staff do misuse systems, they won’t only face internal disciplinary proceedings, they may also feel the full force of the law.”

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