A corrupt Auckland cop who sold police database information to gangs has just been jailed. His conviction illustrates as clearly as possible exactly why having a gun register is a terrible idea.
A former police officer who admitted illegally accessing the police database to leak information to an organised criminal group has been sentenced to 2 years and 2 months in jail.
Vili Mahe Taukolo, 31, previously admitted accessing the police’s National Intelligence Application (NIA) for a dishonest purpose between February 2018 and March.
Vili Mahe Taukolo accessed the NIA to sell information to an organised criminal group.
[…] Johnstone said Taukolo broke his police oath by illegally accessing the database for the purposes of assisting organised crime groups and then made a personal profit of tens of thousands of dollars in cash.
[…] The court heard he made a profit of $70,000 and when police conducted a search of his home found $30,000 cash in his bedroom.
PREVIOUS NIA BREACHES
In May 2013, former police prosecutor Timothy John Russell Sarah was jailed for four years after pleading guilty to three charges of supplying methamphetamine, one of possessing the drug and a representative charge of dishonestly accessing the police computer – the National Intelligence Application.
Sarah had accessed the police computer system more than 80 times, gleaning information from the database, which he then passed on to drug-dealing contacts.
[…] Data obtained by Stuff showed 89 officers misused the NIA database in the past four years.
[…] Since 2015, 184 police staff have been investigated for possible misuse of the database.
Eighty-nine of the allegations were upheld.
As of October, 33 investigations had been launched into alleged police misuse of the NIA in 2019.
Of those, seven had been upheld while 22 were ongoing.
Stuff
The police have already failed to protect gun owners privacy with their shocking data breach, and this court case and other past ones make it very clear that police officers will be offered bribes by gangs and other criminals to provide them with a detailed gun shopping list if a national gun register becomes a reality. All it will take is one single corrupt, coerced or clueless copper and the name and address of every LFO, plus firearm types and quantities, will be in the hands of criminals. It’s simply too nightmarish to think about.
The only way law-abiding gun owners can be protected from gangs and other criminals is if their details are NOT on a police database.