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

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.”

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.

On February 15, 2021, a search was made by Langmead regarding her then partner, Gareth Godfrey, and she sent him a photograph of a summons she had been working on.

The defendant began making searches on the police national computer on her new boyfriend, Cozens, and did so on four occasions between April and May 2021.

She accessed a number of records, reports and custody photographs relating to Cozens.

On May 18, she accessed information about an individual named Katie Power, which she passed on to a friend named Emily. She did this as Ms Power was a tenant at Emily's mother’s property.

Further searches relating to Cozens were carried out in May and October 2021, and Langmead carried out searches on various individuals at her boyfriend’s request.

These included Jeremiah Butler, Cozens’ father Andrew Cozens, Damian Beach and Dean Colin Richards, known as “Scouser”, who was a drug associate of Cozens.

There were later conversations between Cozens and Richards in which Cozens provided information given to him by Langmead.