Steven Albee, 29, pleads guilty to using a carriage service to menace, harass or offend

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

A former Sydney police officer faces possible jail time after he accessed intimate photos on the phone of a woman he had arrested and shared them with police colleagues on social media.

Steven Albee, 29, has pleaded guilty to using a carriage service to menace, harass or offend.

Albee was a constable working in western Sydney when he arrested the woman during a traffic stop in 2017 for refusing a roadside drug test, according to a police statement of facts.

He seized her phone and had it analysed using investigative software.

The phone contained three photos of the woman’s vagina and one of her partner’s penis and torso, the police facts say.

Albee uploaded two of the photos to a Facebook chat group he belonged to with four police colleagues, telling them they depicted the woman and came from her phone. She was upset and embarrassed when she learned that the photos intended for her and her partner were seen by other people, according to the court documents.

Albee, who faced Downing centre local court on Tuesday, is yet to be sentenced with his case returning to the court in February.

At the time of his 2018 arrest, he was suspended with pay but a New South Wales police spokesperson on Tuesday said he was “no longer employed” by the force.

The maximum penalty for his offence is 12 months’ imprisonment, a $12,600 fine, or both.