A former Gloucester County officer was convicted for ‘computer crimes’ after accessing private records
Shaun J. Butler, a former Mantua Township police officer, was investigated after he read, discussed, and edited restricted reports about his personal affairs, prosecutors said.
A former Mantua Township police officer was found guilty Thursday of official misconduct after he used his access to the department’s law enforcement databases to read and manipulate reports about an incident involving him, Gloucester County prosecutors said.
Shaun J. Butler, 46, was convicted of one count of second-degree official misconduct, one count of third-degree computer crimes involving unauthorized access, and one count of third-degree computer crimes involving access and disclosure. Butler is appealing the verdict, his attorneys Tracy and Michael Riley said.
As a lieutenant in the internal affairs department in September 2021, Butler was involved in “an off-duty sexual encounter” with a woman, according to a Friday statement by prosecutors. The woman’s husband found his wife and Butler together in their home, which led to an altercation.
Butler didn’t call 9-1-1, prosecutors said, and he instead called the Mantua dispatch number and didn’t identify himself as an officer.
After the incident, Butler read the restricted reports about the incident “despite warnings the database should be used only for valid law enforcement purposes,” prosecutors said.
Butler also talked about the reports with the woman involved, and told her in calls and chats “how he could use his confidential access to police records to minimize the incident and prevent mutual embarrassment,” prosecutors said.
Five days after the initial incident, Butler added details to a subordinate officer’s draft report, prosecutors said, and attributed his edits to that officer.
Butler’s attorneys said that multiple people within the Gloucester County Sheriff’s Department and other police departments had accessed the restricted police reports, too, but no one aside from Butler was questioned.
William Murphy, Mantua Township’s police chief, called the investigation “a challenging chapter” for the department in a statement on social media.
“The conduct detailed in this matter does not reflect the values or expectations of the Mantua Township Police Department. Accountability is essential to maintaining the trust of the residents we serve, and when any member violates that trust, it is our responsibility to address it through the proper legal and administrative processes,” Murphy wrote.
In addition to the guilty verdict, Butler was found not guilty of several counts, including tampering with a witness, tampering with records, criminal coercion, and a pattern of official misconduct.
Butler is set to be sentenced in December. He faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in state prison for the second-degree charge and five years for each of the third-degree charges, prosecutors said.
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