Another Toronto police officer is facing charges for allegedly unlawfully accessing private police databases over a period of 15 months.
Constable Abbas Popal, 25, of 55 division has been charged with unauthorized use of a computer, a Toronto Police Service press release says. It is alleged that Popal accessed police databases on “multiple occasions” between January 2024 and April 2025.
Popal, who has served in the Toronto Police Service for approximately three years, has been suspended with pay according to the Community Safety and Policing Act. He is scheduled to appear at the 10 Armoury Street, Ontario Court of Justice on June 4.
This charge comes as the force faces increased scrutiny after similar charges were laid in the Project South investigation. (Toronto police are emphasizing that this incident is not connected to that larger investigation.)
Scott Blandford, a retired police officer and the program coordinator of Policing and Public Safety programs at Wilfrid Laurier University, says that officers are trained from the beginning of their careers that these databases are private and exclusive.
“From day one, you are told that that is privileged database and you take an oath to maintain security on it,” said Blandford. “This indicates that they don't take that seriously, that they lack the ethical fortitude to maintain that.”
Tracking all access to police databases proper and improper can be extremely difficult considering the number of queries the databases see on a daily basis.
“The amount of information that’s being accessed on a daily basis is astronomical,” he said. Even though all searches are logged and recorded it can be difficult to prove what was being used for work purposes.
“It’s very difficult to tell on a daily basis what information is being accessed for authorized duty and work-related activities versus what’s being done on a personal level.”
Blandford says that sometimes it’s easier to investigate issues once concerns are raised, rather than detect every single misuse.
“The best you can do is when those situations arise, to be blunt, is to hammer that person with the charges and to set an example,” says Blandford. “This type of behaviour is not to be tolerated and will be dealt with in the harshest term possible.”
Blandford believes that these issues most likely come following a new generation with a much more “casual” approach to computer use and accessing information.
““I think we have a generation of officers that have a much more casual approach to accessing information on the computer because it drives everything in their lives,” he said.
He also noted that there is an ongoing debate to change legislations to allow for discretion for when officers get suspended with or without pay.
“There’s been a lot of activity with the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police, the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police lobbying for changes to that legislation because of these very types of incidents,” he said.
But the Charter of Rights and Freedoms contradicts this as you are innocent until proven guilty therefore meaning this could be a violation of the accused officer’s charter rights.
“When it's a breach of trust directly related to their employment, the argument by the chiefs is it impacts the service, it impacts the public trust, so they should have the discretion to suspend without pay. And that's what is being lobbied for, but those changes to legislation haven't yet occurred.”
