A police officer accused of accessing RCIPS records to get information about a love rival took to the stand on Monday, saying she did not believe the police investigation into her alleged actions had been carried out fairly.
Police Sergeant Keren Watson, currently on suspension from her job, told the jury that she was fighting for her life and her liberty, and that throughout the investigation into her case, she had never been told what crime she is alleged to have committed.
She has denied a charge of misconduct in public office, which is alleged to have been carried out between July 2019 and July 2020 when, the prosecution says, she accessed the police’s Records Management System for personal purposes and requested a friend who worked at Digicel to access phone records between her boyfriend and the woman he was seeing.
Watson said, when questioned by investigators, she had pointed out that accessing the Records Management System, referred to in the evidence as the RMS, was her job and it was not unlawful for her to do so. What would have been unlawful, she said, was disclosing that information to unauthorised individuals, which she denies doing.
The woman whose data she had allegedly accessed had complained to the Ombudsman that Watson had given information about her to others. The complainant had refused in court to name the people to whom she says the information had been given.
Watson said she had repeatedly asked investigators what crime she had committed and had requested the names of the people she is alleged to have given information to.
“I have been asking about this matter for four-and-a-half years, and I am fighting for my life … I was never told what I did,” she said.
The police officer, in her statements to investigators, which were read out in court by her attorney Amelia Fosuhene, noted that several other people in the police service had accessed the same records she is accused of accessing.
Watson, a Jamaican national, said she had been working for the RCIPS in Cayman since 2012, and had received a number of commendations during her time there.
Investigation quiet for two years
She described to the court how, after the investigation into her alleged behaviour by the police’s Professional Standards Unit in July 2020 went quiet for over a year, she applied for a promotion to become an inspector. Knowing that officers with any disciplinary action pending could not apply for promotions, she contacted the investigating officer in the standards unit, who assured her the case had been resolved and she could apply for the promotion.
She did so, but was informed in early January 2022 by the commissioner of police via a letter that he had been made aware that she was still under investigation by the Office of the Ombudsman and, therefore, could not be promoted. It was at this point, she said, that she and her attorney pressed for the matter to be resolved.
Watson also denied the allegations that she had asked a friend at Digicel to check the numbers of her boyfriend and her love rival to see how often they communicated.
Earlier in the trial, the prosecution had called Inspector Denise Anderson, a supervisor in the RMS system. Asked if she had ever requested Watson to access cases involving the complainant, she said she had not.
Fosuhene asked Watson if Anderson was the only person who could request for her to access files, to which Watson replied no. In fact, she said, data from the files could be requested by many people and departments, including the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, Customs and Border Control, Family Support Unit, the police’s custody department, and even members of the public looking for updates or Freedom of Information requests.
She also noted that requests can be made in various ways – in writing by email, in person or by telephone.
Watson said she would review RMS files 3,000 to 4,000 times a year.
She said a number of people, including recruits in training and members of her team, had access to the RMS system using her login.
Closed records
The prosecution had noted that some of the records allegedly accessed by Watson had been closed, and, therefore, there was no reason for them to be opened and viewed by Watson. However, Watson, in her testimony, pointed out that even if cases are classified as ‘closed’ in the RMS, they were not locked and, therefore, could be accessed by anyone using the system.
Fosuhene went through a number of the records for which Watson’s login was used to access the complainant’s cases, and brought to her and the jury’s attention that, in each instance, a number of other individuals had also accessed those files.
Asked by Fosuhene if she had looked at any of the complainant’s records to “gather personal information”, Watson said she had not.
During questioning about her relationship with her cheating boyfriend, Fosuhene asked why Watson had asked the woman with whom he was involved to come to her home in October 2018. Watson said she told the woman, who, like the boyfriend, was a prison officer, to come by after she called her, saying she wanted to discuss something urgently.
Watson said she thought the woman, who she had known in Jamaica and with whom she occasionally worked at the police detention centre, had wanted to talk about her husband, with whom she knew she had been having problems.
Instead, the woman asked Watson if she was in a relationship with her prison officer colleague, and told her she was also involved with him. He later denied to Watson that he was seeing anyone else.
Accused of being jealous
Fosuhene said the prosecution’s suggestion was that Watson was jealous of the woman, and, therefore, had accessed her records in the police database and spread rumours about her. Watson questioned, if this were the case, why she wouldn’t have done so immediately after the woman had come to her home and revealed her relationship with Watson’s boyfriend. Instead, the records were not accessed until July the following year.
“She came to my house in 2018, and if I was jealous or curious or wanted to know her business, I would have gone into the system at that time. As per the allegations, I went into the system in July 2019. That would have been eight months after I spoke to her,” she said.
She said she was still in a relationship with the man in 2019, but did not know he was seeing the other woman because the woman had earlier told Watson that he had blocked her and she believed they were no longer in contact.
Watson said she realised something was going on between the two in early 2020 and she broke off the relationship. She admitted she had called the woman to ask if she was seeing her boyfriend, but denied, as asserted by the complainant, that she had been abusive or aggressive in the call.
She also denied ever making calls to the woman at Northward prison, stating that if she had done so to a prison landline, records of those calls would be available. She said it did not seem as though police had followed up this line of inquiry, as she had suggested to them.
Watson said she did not believe her assertions in relation to her case during her police interviews had been checked out.
“I believe I should have been given a fair investigation. If I am guilty, I am guilty, but I am going to be guilty on the tenet that you conduct your investigations fairly,” she said.
The case continues before Grand Court Justice Cheryll Richards.
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