Several dozen cases of database misuse reported in Georgia

The Associated Press identified more than 40 instances of database misuse in Georgia that resulted in some form of discipline, in records provided by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

The officials sanctioned between 2013 and 2015 include operators on 911 emergency lines, police officers and court workers. The violations were reported both by municipal and statewide police agencies. The punishments ranged from written warnings to firing.

The violations fit a pattern seen nationwide, with many improperly accessing data during domestic entanglements, for purely personal purposes or at the request of family members.

The bureau's Georgia Crime Information Center each year compiles records showing how agencies discipline employees for cases of database misuse. The cases are then reviewed by a council which signs off on them.

The cases detailed in records provided by the state include: a Hall County sheriff's officer who twice did searches on the license plate of a car parked in his ex-wife's driveway; a DeKalb County officer who improperly divulged vehicle registration information to a nightclub owner he worked for, and a College Park police employee who ran a warrant search at the request of a family member, then disclosed that information.

In addition, the records show, a Madison police officer requested a criminal history check on his wife to see if a record had been expunged, while a sheriff's officer in Banks County was found to have conducted a driver's license query on his girlfriend's ex-husband without cause.

A Harlem police officer gave her roommate's license information to a communications officer and requested a history. And, according to the GBI records, an Alpharetta police employee asked dispatch to run a driver's inquiry on his son to determine the status of his license.

All told, the AP's review found that officers across the country have misused law enforcement databases hundreds of times to look up information on ex-romantic partners, relatives, celebrities, journalists and others for reasons that had nothing to do with daily police work.