Monday, July 8, 2013

CORRUPTION: National Crime Information Center ---Fed database used illegally?

What is it? 

It's billed by the FBI as "the lifeline of law enforcement" — a federal database used to catch criminals, recover stolen property and even identify terrorism suspects.

It has all the info on criminals and crime. 

And guess what has happened? It has been used illegally. Imagine that, a database of info, collected by the government was used illegally. I am shocked!!! Not really.

An Associated Press story states that it was used illegally by....surprise....government employees.
An investigator testified as a government witness at the 2010 trial of an NYPD officer accused of using the database to conduct surveillance of a perfume warehouse in New Jersey before an armed robbery there. He told jurors that officers often do searches while logged in under another officer's name — either out of neglect or, in this case, intent.
"Unfortunately ... it's not unusual that it happens," the investigator said.
Former NYPD officer Gilbert Valle,  prosecutors alleged that he used the database to help compile dossiers on women that listed their birthdates, addresses, heights and weights. None of the women were harmed, but prosecutors alleged he went as far as to show up on one woman's block after striking an agreement to kidnap her for $5,000 for a New Jersey man who wanted to rape and kill her.
Federal authorities charged NYPD patrolman Jose Tejada with being a member of a crew that posed as police officers while staging more than 100 robberies of drug traffickers that netted more than 250 kilograms of cocaine and $1 million in cash.
Tejada "ran the names of coconspirators through law enforcement databases to determine whether there were active warrants in the names of the coconspirators," prosecutors said in court papers. "In connection with these searches, Tejada advised coconspirators whether they could re-enter the United States without being arrested by law enforcement authorities."
Other cases include a Memphis police officer of using the NCIC database to leak information to a confidential informant about a watch dealer who the informant believed had stolen a Rolex; a reserve patrolman in Clarkston, Ga., of running names and license plates for marijuana dealers; a Montgomery County, Md., officer of running checks on cars belonging to a woman who later reported that the vehicles had been vandalized; and a Hartford, Conn., police sergeant of supplying database records to a woman who used them to harass her ex-boyfriend's new girlfriend.

In Related News.... See what the NY TIMES says
H/T WeaselZippers

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