Crown: Jealousy drove police officer to misconduct

(CNS): Prosecutor Earl Pinnock told a jury on Tuesday that Police Sergeant Keren Watson was driven by jealousy when she used her position as a member of the RCIPS to access information about a love rival, which she used to bully and intimidate. As Pinnock, a UK-based attorney, opened the crown’s case against Watson for misconduct in public office on behalf of the director of public prosecutions, he said that trust was important because without it, “we are all lost”.

He said that Watson had abused the public trust placed in her when she entered the police database to find personal details about the woman who was having a long-standing affair with a man she had become involved with.

Watson is accused of using a friend who worked at Digicel to trace the telephone calls between her lover and the woman she believed was still in a sexual relationship with her boyfriend. The two women were already acquainted with each other. The victim was a serving prison officer — as was the man in the love triangle — and as a police officer, Watson interacted with her at the detention centre and during the transport of prisoners.

The crown says that as well as tracking calls, Watson also accessed the RCIPS Record Mansion System, which officers use to log all of the details of the cases they are working on, to find details of her love rival. The system is reserved for police business only, and officers should only access the cases in which they are involved. They are prohibited from using the information for personal purposes.

The crown says that Watson searched the database to find details of reports related to the woman she believed was having an affair with her boyfriend. The woman was in an abusive marriage. As a result, she had been the complainant and, on occasion, the potential perpetrator of incidents at her home. There were nine reports relating to the woman’s family, and Watson illegally accessed eight of them as one of the reports overlapped with a case she was supervising.

Watson is alleged to have gone on to use the information she found to besmirch the victim’s name and to annoy and harass her. Over a year-long period, the crown says, she called and bullied her due to jealousy because she believed her lover was continuing with the affair.

The victim had been reluctant to involve the police because Watson was a serving officer, but when it became clear that Watson must have accessed the victim’s personal information on the RMS, she decided to approach the police commissioner with her concerns. He turned the case over to Detective Inspector Joseph Wright and the Ombudsman, who found Watson had accessed calls via Digicel through her friend — who was later fired — and that she had unlawfully accessed the RMS.

When Watson was interviewed, she denied the allegations, stating that many people could have used her log-in.

The case continues.