KENSINGTON — Spying cops?

In what a privacy expert called an “extremely egregious” example of police abusing their authority, Kensington officers accessed a highly confidential state law-enforcement database at least nine times to gather information on a now former elected official who was critical of their department.

The documents, released under the state’s new police accountability law, Senate Bill 1421, deliver another black eye for the police department in this tiny, affluent, unincorporated town in the hills north of Berkeley.

The revelations are contained in the disciplinary records of an officer who was fired for leaking information about the data searches and later denying it to investigators.

The documents show that multiple officers, whose names are blacked out, accessed records on former police board member Vanessa Cordova in 2014 and 2015 through the California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System, known as CLETS. The system contains information on California residents’ criminal history, driving record and links to national law enforcement databases. Its use for non-law enforcement purposes can be a felony under state law.

“Why should people outside of Kensington care about this?” asked David Maass, an investigative researcher for the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation who has looked into misuse of the law-enforcement database. “Because these cops can spy on anyone in the state. It’s alarming (and) an extremely egregious example” of abuse of the database.

“We’ve long suspected this is the sort of thing that is going on all the time,” Maass said.

In two instances, the name of the officer searching records on Cordova was not entered into the system. One search occurred the day before officers Juan Ramos and Keith Barrow pulled her over in Berkeley on Oct. 7, 2015, and ticketed her for an overdue registration and missing front license plate. Cordova claimed they harassed her. Both officers were disciplined for the stop, but an investigator found no harassment occurred, a finding Cordova disputes. The officers claimed the stop was made randomly while they were on their way to buy energy drinks. A judge later dismissed the tickets.

Only Ramos has been previously tied to directly searching Cordova’s records. Former Kensington Police Chief Kevin Hart told this news organization in 2016 that just a “minor infraction” of CLETS rules was found when Ramos was investigated after the traffic stop and “there is no evidence of any widespread misuse. Any claims of additional CLETS abuse is without merit and not true.”

But the records released Friday show the number of searches is much higher than Kensington officials have acknowledged.

Reached Tuesday, Hart said he didn’t recall any finding that Cordova’s records were accessed at least nine times.

“I have moved on, and I don’t remember,” he said. “But I would I stand by my statement (at the time).”

Cordova responded angrily to the revelations. “I don’t feel vindicated, I feel violated,” she wrote in an email. The records confirm “what I have always alleged: that I was targeted by members of the Kensington Police Department in political retaliation for my police reform agenda.”

Cordova had helped to push out a former chief, Greg Harmon, for his light discipline of Barrow when the officer’s gun and badge were stolen by a sex worker in Reno in 2014 after he paid her for sex and fell asleep.

Tuesday, the president of the Kensington Police Protection and Community Services District Board called for an investigation.

“I have asked our attorney to investigate these abuses,” Eileen Nottoli said, pointing out that the documents show officers were accessing Cordova’s records, “even before she took office (in 2014). I find that very odd.”

Nottoli said some residents who have been critical of the department, or favored disbanding it in favor of contracting with another agency for police services, have said police harassed them. “I have heard many stories from residents, and I do wonder, I do wonder,” she said.

Ironically, the officers’ improper use of the restricted database to gather information about Cordova was revealed Friday in documents detailing the firing of one of her allies within the police department. Sgt. Kevin Hui was fired in 2016 for lying when confronted about leaking information to Cordova after he conducted an audit of the CLETS searches — part of the internal investigation into Cordova’s complaints against the officers.

Hui did not return messages.

Release of the documents came as police unions across the state fight to try to stop disclosure of disciplinary records. A judge in Los Angeles on Tuesday rejected an argument that the records from past years can’t be released under the new state transparency law designed to shine a light on officer misconduct. A Contra Costa County judge reached the same conclusion earlier this month, but in Ventura County, a judge sided with police. The matter will likely end up before the California Supreme Court.

Kensington isn’t alone in officers abusing the police databases or spying on people

A San Diego Sheriff’s deputy was sentenced to a year in jail last year for groping a 14-year-old girl. Investigators found he improperly accessed his own criminal case more than 33 times before he was arrested.

In the border town of Calexico in Imperial County, federal investigators found that police spent $100,000 on equipment, some of it described as “James Bond spy glasses,” for surveillance of city council members and citizens who complained about police abuses.

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In Kensington, police district General Manager Tony Constantouros said the town keeps trying to move beyond embarrassments such as Barrow’s stolen gun, Harmon’s ouster and the Cordova traffic stop.

“We want to go forward,” Constantouros said Tuesday, “but the past keeps coming back.”

Sukey Lewis of KQED News contributed to this story.