Sharing of login details among police 'known but not investigated'

The Inspector in charge the police station where Leeroy Balzan was stationed was aware that police officers had shared their login details to the incident reporting system in the past but had never investigated this practice.  

This statement emerged during the compilation of evidence against Police Sergeant Leeroy Balzan, who stands accused of tampering with an incident report in connection with last month’s shooting incident involving Paul Sheehan, driver of then Home Affairs minister, Manuel Mallia.

Investigations into the deletion of four paragraphs from the report indicated that they occurred while Balzan was logged in to the system.

Balzan had told the police that he had accessed the report after he received a call from the police Community and Media Relations Unit requesting he access the police report on the shooting and check whether anyone was on the detainee list at the time of Sheehan’s arrest.  After some time, his shift ended and he left the station.

Police Inspector Graziella Muscat from the CMRU confirmed that the Unit had called the station, corroborating Balzan’s claim in this regard.

The defence is claiming that Balzan had not logged out of the system when he left the station and that he had shared his password with other officers in the past. Balzan had previously told investigators that he had given his password to a new police constable to allow him to input data and file police reports in the system.

Inspector Jonathan Ransley, stationed in Sliema, told the court that new policemen often would often not be immediately issued with a password and as their duties included inputting police reports, “sometimes passwords are shared. You have to have a password to be able to work.” Ransley said that he knew of specific cases where passwords had been shared but had never investigated them.

This was further confirmed by Police Inspector Pierre Minuti, from the Police IT department. He told the court that of 2,155 police officers that make up the Corps, 1816 have access to the system and 339 do not.

Inspector Jesmond Micallef told the court that the day after the incident, he had spoken to the Attorney General Peter Grech, requesting a legal opinion on whether the incident constituted grounds for criminal action or whether it would be best dealt with through internal disciplinary proceedings alone. Grech suggested criminal proceedings.

Under cross-examination, Inspector Micallef said that he had studied CCTV footage from a post office and pharmacy near the Gzira police station where the deletion took place. He recognized Balzan’s gait, however the face was not visible. “From the pharmacy footage, he seems to be walking towards his residence. This corroborates the version he gave us at the time, but I cannot say it was him with 100 per cent certainty”.

Micallef said that the Attorney General did not watch the footage but was shown still frames taken from it. He said that he had also told the AG that the policeman in the footage resembled Balzan.

The case will continue in February.