Third Leicestershire police officer accused of inappropriately accessing force information

A third Leicestershire cop has been accused of inappropriately accessing police data. Pc David Tweddle allegedly went into “multiple police incident logs without a policing purpose or lawful authority”, Leicestershire Police has said.

The force said this happened on 14 separate days between Friday, June 2, 2023, and Tuesday, July 4 of the same year. Pc Tweddle now faces a gross misconduct hearing which will be held in the coming weeks.

Leicestershire Police said, if proven, the actions are considered a breach of the standards of professional behaviour. These include breaches of confidentiality, orders and instructions, and creditable conduct.

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Pc Tweddle is not the first officer to be accused of such breaches. In May, Pc Hiron Miah was found to have “intentionally” and “deliberately” accessed confidential information on the force’s records. He was handed a three-year final written warning.

Pc Miah claimed “poor training” had led to the multiple searches, which followed incidents in Loughborough between October and November 2022. The panel accepted he might have had “limited training” due to Covid-19. However, the panel said that that did not justify the searches which they found were both “intentional and deliberate”, but conceded that no details from any of the searches had been shared with anyone else.

Earlier this month, another local police officer was accused of similar breaches. Pc Oliver Platts has now been handed a final written warning for accessing 221 confidential reports over a ten day period in June 2023.

A panel ruled there was no "nefarious motive" behind his actions, but said the seriousness of them was heightened by the fact they were “regular and repeated” and “continued after he knew or should have realised is behaviour was improper”.

Pc Platts was also based in Loughborough at the time. It is not known if any of the incidents are linked or where Pc Tweddle was stationed at the time of his alleged breaches.