Police worker accessed data on force's computers to pass to her drug dealer boyfriend

A FORMER police employee accessed unauthorised information on force computers to help her drug dealer boyfriend, a court heard.

- PHILIP DEWEY Court correspondent

She was told by a judge she had "done serious harm to policing and the public interest".

Lucy Langmead, 44, was employed as a police administrator by South Wales Police when she began a relationship with Daniel Cozens, 37, a drug dealer with contacts in the drug world.

She helped her boyfriend by accessing sensitive data on the police national computer, which she passed on to him, and which he then passed to his associates.

A sentencing hearing at Cardiff Crown Court on June 3 heard Langmead also accessed information to feed her own "morbid" curiosity, including information about the murder of five-year-old Logan Mwangi in the early stages of the investigation.

The defendant, a mother-of-three, had been employed at Pontypridd police station since 2005 and began a relationship with convicted drug dealer Cozens in 2021. He was a user of cocaine and cannabis, to which he was addicted.

In her opening to the court, prosecutor Carina Hughes said: "Lucy Langmead was fully aware that searching for, and accessing data was in contravention of the legal notice if it was not for police purposes, she was personally associated to it, and it was outside her working duties.

"That the data is sensitive and any sharing of it would be illegal. Such non-compliance, she knew, could result in criminal proceedings."

Sensitive data accessed

The first unlawful accessing of information happened on May 10, 2020, when Langmead conducted searches about her sister-in-law Angharad Cox, after she had been arrested for failing a breathalyser.

On November 2, 2020, Langmead accessed information about an investigation in which a man named Gavin Mountjoy was the complainant.

She then spoke to her friend and Mr Mountjoy's brother Darren about the case over WhatsApp.