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Aug 16, 2021 • 2 hours ago • 3 minute read • 9 Comments 
London police Const. Stephen Williams is charged with sexual assault stemming from an off-duty incident involving an ex-girlfriend on Nov. 17.
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A suspended London police officer has pleaded guilty to seven more counts of professional misconduct for using an internal database to look into another force’s investigation into allegations against him and to snoop on girlfriends.
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Const. Steve Williams, 44, pleaded guilty during a virtual hearing Monday to six counts of insubordination and one count of discreditable conduct under the Police Services Act (PSA), the law governing policing in Ontario under which departments hold disciplinary hearings into professional misconduct.
Williams misused the Canadian Police Information Centre (CPIC) – a database of records from law enforcement agencies across the country – dozens of times between 2016 and 2019 for personal use, the tribunal heard.
In several of the unauthorized CPIC queries, Williams searched the name of his on-again, off-again girlfriend, identified only as R.P., pulling up a Waterloo regional police (WRP) occurrence that listed him as the subject, according to an agreed statement of facts presented Monday.
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Williams selected the “investigative” option for viewing the occurrence, but he was unable to see it because it was privatized.
During an interview with Sgt. Darren Couling of the London police professional standards branch on April 12, 2019, Williams said that R.P. had told him that she’d spoken with a Waterloo police detective about his actions.
Williams said he was curious about the conversation and also admitted to searching himself to see if the record was still privatized.
Williams, who ran 21 searches on himself between 2016 and 2017, said he was taught at the Ontario Police College in Aylmer that officers were allowed to query their own names in searches. However, the training provided to cadets and London police policy mandates that CPIC searches can only be used for work purposes.
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Williams also ran 20 searches between 2016 and 2017 on the mother of his son.
“I would be shocked that I ran her on CPIC, but if you’re saying that I did, then I did,” he said in an interview with Couling.
“And it wasn’t for any other reason and I can back this . . . that I want nothing but good for her . . . I mean I worry about her.”
In addition to searching R.P. and her sister-in-law, Williams also ran queries on two other women he was dating at the time.
Williams has been suspended with pay since December 2017, when Waterloo police charged him with criminal harassment, being unlawfully in a dwelling and making a harassing phone call stemming from allegations made by R.P.
Three weeks later, London police charged Williams with sexual assault involving a different ex-girlfriend.
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Williams pleaded guilty to making a harassing phone call and two counts of breaching his release conditions and the remaining charges were withdrawn as part of a conditional discharge that gave him 12 months’ probation but spared him a criminal record.
Last month, Williams pleaded guilty to one count of discreditable conduct under the PSA for breaking his bail conditions by using a dating website to contact a woman when he was banned from using the Internet unsupervised.
In May, Williams was found guilty of one count of professional misconductunder the PSA for harassing R.P. by texting, calling, emailing and showing up unannounced at her Kitchener-area home and workplace after they broke up.
Williams, who has the same name as London’s police chief but isn’t related to him, has yet to be sanctioned for any of the PSA offences. The tribunal resumes on Aug. 27.
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https://lfpress.com/news/local-news/suspended-london-cop-used-police-database-to-track-girlfriends
