Behind the tape
Expert advice to get the details right in your crime fiction, from serving police officer Lisa Cutts
Lisa Cutts
QCould one of my detectives use the police systems to look up her friend’s new boyfriend and get away with it? I need her to find out some information without getting into trouble.
Declan P, by email
A The police computer systems are audited, and any user needs to be granted access and have a password to do so. They should all be different passwords too, like access to bank accounts and websites for personal reasons. It doesn’t mean to say that she couldn’t use the police databases for her own use, but if she gets caught, she is very likely to lose her job. It may take a short period of time for the audit to be carried out and for Professional Standards to catch up with her, although she may well find herself suspended from duty as a result of what she had done. A less risky way for her career would be for her to overhear a conversation between colleagues, although I appreciate this may come across as contrived. Data Protection is a very hot topic and usually very easy to prove. Having said that, if she had a number of Police National Computer records to check for several witnesses to a crime, it would be fairly easy to hide the details in amongst a dozen others.