Appeals court clears police sergeant of all wrongdoing over partial deletion of Sheehan report

Police sergeant Leroy Balzan has been exonerated of any and all wrongdoing, regarding the partial deletion of a report involving a 2014 shooting incident

Sheehan (left) on the night of the incident, in the Tal-Qroqq tunnels
Sheehan (left) on the night of the incident, in the Tal-Qroqq tunnels

An appeals court has exonerated Police Sergeant Leeroy Balzan of any wrongdoing in the the partial deletion of a police report relating to a 2014 shooting incident involving police officer Paul Sheehan, then the driver of Manuel Mallia, who was home affairs minister at the time.

Sheehan is accused of shooting at an unarmed motorist, involved in a hit and run incident with the ministerial vehicle. He is thought to have fired at least twice at the moving vehicle of Scotsman Stephen Smith in November 2014, after Smith collided with the ministerial vehicle, when it was parked on Nicholas Cottoner Street, Gzira, while driving under the influence of alcohol.

He was initially charged with attempted homicide - although this charge was later dropped - intimidation using a weapon, voluntary damage, being in possession of a firearm without good reason during the commission of an offence, discharging a firearm in a public place, causing a disturbance at night, breaching the peace, exceeding the limits of his authority and committing a crime that he was duty bound to prevent.

The case against him is believed to be ongoing.

An inquiry set up to investigate the shooting incident concluded that Sheehan had fired two shots at Smith’s Vauxhall, and that there had been a cover-up attempt by individuals close to Paul Sheehan to hide the facts of the case.

The deletion of details in the arrest report for Stephen Smith from the original version on the police computer system was alleged to have occurred on 22 November between 1pm and 2pm at the Sliema police station.

MaltaToday was the first to report the deletion of the report.

The police then pressed charges against sergeant Leeroy Balzan, who was later cleared of computer misuse, preventing the input of data, changing, deleting or adding of official data, committing crimes damaging to the government, prejudicing his senior and committing a crime he was duty bound to prevent in relation to the editing of the incident report on the 2014 shooting.

He was, however, found guilty of giving internal passwords to unauthorised persons, interfering with a government service and was handed a one-year conditional discharge.

Balzan’s lawyers Franco Debono and Marion Camilleri filed an appeal against the judgment, arguing that the practice of sharing passwords with new constables was necessary for the police to do their work and demanded that he be completely exonerated.

New recruits would be issued their personal PIRS login weeks after taking their oath of allegiance and had to use their colleagues’ details until then, they argued. This was confirmed by several high ranking police officers.

The defence pointed out that once logged in, the system would automatically log a user out after 20 minutes of inactivity, but that this timer would be reset every time the mouse was moved or a key pressed. This meant that the system could be logged in on a single username for hours at a time.

In her judgment upholding the appeal Judge Edwina Grima observed that it had been the Police themselves who had ordered  the new recruit to use another officer’s password.

Moreover, the court noted that it had clearly emerged that the practise of sharing passwords had long been rife in the force at the time and no internal or judicial proceedings had been taken against any other officer for having done so.

The appellant had not been convicted of misuse of computer equipment or unauthorised access to or modification of data on the system, noted the court, but had been found guilty on his own admission of allowing an orderly to access the system using his login because he had not yet been issued one of his own. 

One element of the offence of which he had been convicted was the intention to facilitate the clandestine misuse of the system. A number of high ranking police officials had said that there was no alternative to sharing passwords as failure to do this would cause a backlog of reports to input.

The court of appeal cleared Balzan of all wrongdoing, saying it was “somewhat perplexed” as to why the prosecution, in the knowledge of the widespread practise of password sharing had charged a the appellant with a fact “which apparently had the blessing of the highest officials in the police.“