Miami Cop Used Database to Track Ex-Girlfriend, Her New Cop Boyfriend

To protect South Florida’s citizens, local police officers have a lot of tools at their disposal. One of them is the software program DAVID — Driver and Vehicle Information Database — which officers can use to look up anyone’s car and license plate info.

For privacy reasons, use of that system is strictly regulated. Among the forbidden activities if you're a Miami cop: using DAVID to track another cop who is now dating your ex-girlfriend, who is also a cop. 

A City of Miami Police officer learned that lesson the hard way this month. He's now been reprimanded by internal affairs for misusing DAVID on a Sweetwater cop who'd hooked up with his ex. 

Police officials caught on to the problem in June, according to IA records, after a few suspicious database searches. One City of Sweetwater lieutenant’s name had been run in the system over and over again; after being alerted to the issue, a Sweetwater internal affairs officer, Major Aquiles Carmona, conducted a “reverse” search investigation. He found that the search was being done by City of Miami cop Jesus Infante.

Infante, who was hired by the city in 2006, “had run the name of a City of Sweetwater detective 12 times,” Carmona would later tell another official. In his investigation, Carmona also discovered the likely motive: “It is believed that Officer Infante and the Sweetwater detective are both involved with a female rookie City of Miami Police officer.”

Sweetwater Police then contacted the City of Miami’s internal affairs, which did its own investigation: Infante was on the clock at K-9 training when he conducted the searches, the department found, and had recently been told by the young woman in question that she had gotten back together with the Sweetwater officer.

Confronted with all of that evidence, Infante admitted to the City of Miami’s IA that he had indeed conducted the DAVID searches. Why? He claimed they were done “‘for his safety,’” according to an IA interview, “in order to know what type of vehicle [the Sweetwater lieutenant] drove.

A week before his Sweetwater search, IA found, Infante had also made two inquiries on the system for his ex-girlfriend; the Miami IA report about the incident emphasized that the department’s computers “may be used only for legitimate business purposes” to assist users with their jobs, and that “use of the computer resource is a privilege that may be revoked at any time.”

Infante was found by IA to have violated procedure and was ordered into a department counseling program. An MPD spokesperson didn't return New Times’ request for comment from the department or from Infante. Last week the city’s Civilian Investigative Panel, a police watchdog, reviewed the matter but was unable to contact either Infante or the Sweetwater lieutenant.