'Bored' cop used police database to pursue women

A Victorian cop used private police databases to find out personal details of vulnerable women he was interested in pursuing sexual relationships with.

He then tried to meet the women, some of whom were victims of crime, sending hundreds of texts to them or going to their homes.

Brett Johnson, 42, has admitted 10 charges of misconduct in public office while he worked at police stations in Richmond, Fawkner, Sunshine and Pyramid Hill between 2010 and 2019.

He resigned from Victoria Police in 2021 after being charged. 

Two of the nine women whose information he stole from the Victorian Police Law Enforcement Assistance Program (LEAP) told the County Court on Wednesday they now view all police as predators.

Ms Victoria, who cannot be named for legal reasons, worked as a brothel manager and was witness to a theft Johnson was investigating.

They began a sexual relationship after he started contacting her.

He looked up her private information on LEAP more than 200 times between 2012 and 2017, including accessing her mental health records after she absconded while being transferred via ambulance.

"The offender contacted her sometime after this event and asked if she had been a naughty girl," prosecutor Kristie Churchill told the court.

She has since moved house four times because she is scared that Johnson or other police will find her. She worries any interaction with police will get back to Johnson.

"When I see police I think they are a pack of dogs," she said, in a statement read to court.

Another woman, who had been in a relationship with Johnson years before he looked up her information on LEAP, said she now fears all police.

"I see them as sexual predators wanting to expose me and give out my information," she said.

In June 2019, Johnson began sending texts and Snapchats to another woman, who was reporting for bail at Fawkner police station.

Late one evening, she got a message from Johnson asking her to come downstairs because he was at a cafe below her building. She locked her doors and told him to go home.

He sent flirty messages to a 19-year-old woman who was a victim of family violence and was reporting to police that she feared her ex-partner.

Johnson sent the woman 917 texts, attempting to pursue an intimate relationship with her and asked if he could attend her home for a "welfare check". She rebuffed his advances.

Johnson, who is on bail, was initially charged with more than 100 offences before most were withdrawn when he pleaded guilty to 10.

His lawyer Abbie Roodenburg said Johnson was under psychological stress and had relationship concerns when he began the offending.

She asked for him to not be handed a prison sentence and claimed he was seeking "validation and affirmation" from women after a previous girlfriend cheated on him. 

Ms Roodenburg said Johnson was "bored" at a one-person police station in Pyramid Hill when he began checking up Ms Victoria's information.

Judge Liz Gaynor said Johnson's use of LEAP was "a complete abuse of power".

"Police hold a particular position of power in the community, with that comes trust and betrayal of that trust is extremely serious," she said.

She will sentence Johnson next month.