An NYPD officer was indicted today on charges of illegally providing internal police intelligence and personal details about fellow cops to a drug trafficking organization.
Devon Daniels, 30, was charged by a Brooklyn federal grand jury with four counts of accessing a computer database without authorization and four counts of lying to federal agents.
Daniels was arrested on May 15 by the Drug Enforcement Administration and NYPD Internal Affairs detectives after investigators discovered that he had illegally gained access to the NYPD’s computer database and then furnished restricted information to a drug trafficking organization with both Midwestern and New York City connections, officials said.
At the time he was secretly passing along internal police secrets, officials say, Daniels was a uniformed patrol officer assigned to the 111th Precinct station house in Bayside, Queens.
Brooklyn federal prosecutors say Daniels also gave an official police department parking placard to a drug distributor and tipped the gang to details about cops involved in narcotics investigations.
Daniels also used mobile computer terminals inside NYPD cruisers to run license plate registration checks, and then sent text messages to a drug dealer based in Jamaica, Queens, with information gleaned from the police department’s computer database, officials said.
In addition, DEA agents said that Daniels also ran computer checks to see if people tied to drug trafficking organizations were wanted by the police and unlawfully accessed the NYPD database to retrieve information about criminal rap sheets, later supplying it to the drug dealers, officials said.
Investigators came across one text message in which an alleged drug operative asked Daniels’ help in procuring for him “any working revolver.”
It is not clear if Daniels delivered on the request.
For all supposed his work on behalf of the drug organization, Daniels received only token payments of appreciation, because he essentially was helping childhood pals in an act of friendship, investigators believe.
“They were friends from the neighborhood,” one source said.
Daniels – who joined the department in 2007 – remains free on bail while awaiting trial and is currently suspended without pay from the NYPD.
mmaddux@nypost.com