Police officer's computer ends up in criminal's hands, sensitive information accessed
Investigation concludes Fredericton officer won’t face charges
A criminal had access to sensitive police information through a Fredericton police officer's old computer, a police watchdog agency report reveals.
The Serious Incident Response Team report released Monday says an officer used a personal computer to access work email. The computer was thrown away without its data being wiped and ended up in the possession of a man arrested in a drug case in 2023.
The agency investigated how that person ended up with "sensitive police information" and whether the officer committed a crime.
SIRT director Erin Nauss said the officer won't be charged. The officer's name has not been released.
"While it is unusual and careless that a police officer's computer ended up in the possession of the Accused, based on the available evidence I do not have reasonable and probable grounds to believe that the [officer] provided the computer or the documents to the Accused, or that he had knowledge the Accused was in possession of the documents," the SIRT report states.
The extent of access the person had to police information through the computer isn't clear in the report.
"For the purposes of our investigation, we focused on the criminality and whether there was any criminality of that particular officer," Nauss told CBC.
"So I wouldn't be able to speculate about what police documents or Fredericton police materials would have been accessed or accessible through that computer, especially where we weren't able to recover it as part of our investigation."
Fredericton police did not respond to a request for comment.
Nauss said the case wasn't connected to a Fredericton Police Force error that led to murder charges being stayed against five people last month.
The report released Monday lays out what SIRT determined about how the person ended up with the computer.
The report says Fredericton police arrested a man and searched his home in 2023. Several phones were seized. The man is not named in the report.
In May 2024, an officer was looking through one phone for evidence and came across photos on the phone of police documents. The report says they were "about a missing person, and intelligence information about ongoing criminal activity."
The documents were marked "Protected A," a security level that SIRT says is "intelligence shared between law enforcement agencies that is not [to] be shared or distributed beyond agencies."
Photos of family, contact list
Photos on the phone showed family photos on the computer, as well as a contact list. Another image showed the computer administrator was the officer.
The report says the photos on the phone were taken about a month and a half before the 2023 search.
SIRT's report describes the officer being questioned by police management, saying he "appeared perplexed and was not able to provide an explanation."
The report says the officer told investigators he had no connection beyond police duties to the man who ended up with the computer.
The report says the Apple desktop computer was purchased when the man was an auxiliary officer around 2014 or 2015. He later became a full-time officer.
The officer told investigators the computer was used to access work email since not all Fredericton officers get issued laptops or cell phones.
The officer told investigators the computer hadn't been used — or even plugged in — for years and that he didn't recall it having a password. He said he last saw it around August 2023.
In an email to another Fredericton police officer, the officer's wife indicated the computer was supposed to be thrown out and wasn't believed to be of any value.
The report includes different versions of how the accused came into possession of the officer's computer. SIRT investigators spoke to witnesses who said the computer was either left outside the man's home or found in a dumpster.
A woman told police her boyfriend was given the computer as payment for a debt in August 2023. The report says he asked his girlfriend to look through it "and see what she could find that was related to him."
SIRT interviewed the man last month, noting he is "in custody." He told SIRT the computer was found in a dumpster and had "old police reports" and that he assumed it was still in his home.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
