Top Kaiser security chief fired amid Oakland cop database privacy probe

OAKLAND Kaiser Permanente has fired a top corporate protection official along with a number of his underlings amid statements that an Oakland police officer shared information from a highly confidential criminal database with the healthcare care giant According to multiple sources an Oakland police officer is accused of researching people in the California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System then passing along the information to at least one former police officer working for Kaiser The brewing shame could stretch well beyond its apparent origins in Oakland both because of Kaiser s large West Coast footprint and the breadth of the database It also could lead to criminal charges as it is illegal under state law to use the database known by the acronym CLETS for non-law enforcement purposes It contains residents criminal history driving records and links to national law enforcement databases The number of individuals the Oakland officer is accused of checking is not known but multiple sources announced the searches related to threats made against at least one Kaiser employee Experts say such an information release is a serious breach that could expose details that should never be shared with anyone outside of a criminal affair even former cops There are an infinite number of techniques that this information could be abused disclosed W David Ball a professor of criminal law at Santa Clara University s School of Law The power it has is it s comprehensive that s also the danger Multiple sources with direct knowledge of the situation identified the Oakland officer as Khyber Mangal a veteran officer whose assignments in his decade-plus career include patrol scrutinizing violent crimes and working with the city s crime-reduction Ceasefire undertaking He s also a member of the U S Marshals task force The Oakland Police Department has opened an internal affairs inquiry and a criminal inquiry to determine if Mangal improperly accessed the criminal database and whether he knew the information would end up at Kaiser the sources announced He was on administrative leave as of Friday afternoon according to an email from the department s communications group Multiple attempts by this newspaper to reach Mangal or an attorney representing him were unsuccessful The sources declared the material is considered to have ended up with a private Kaiser precaution squad working under Craig Chew the national director of corporate precaution investigations for Kaiser headquartered in Oakland Chew entered the private guard world after a nearly -year career in East Bay law enforcement greater part lately as the chief of inspectors at the Alameda County District Attorney s Office where he worked until he was fired without cause in a massive staff shakeup by then-District Attorney Pamela Price after she took office in January He later filed a lawsuit against Alameda County over his dismissal claiming Price stoked a heritage of racial discrimination against Asian Americans According to multiple sources Chew brought several former Oakland police officers to work under him at Kaiser including Omega Crum who also formerly worked as a part-time investigator at the San Francisco District Attorney s Office Reached by phone Crum hung up and other attempts to reach him were unsuccessful After learning of the charges Kaiser terminated several members of its protection detail according to the sources and Chew but the identities of those fired employees have not been made residents Other people working in Kaiser corporate protection which includes former law enforcement officers from other parts of the Bay Area as well as Southern California either did not respond to requests for comment or declined to talk Reached this week Chew noted he did not want to go into detail about the situation but sought to distance himself from it I can state that I never illegally obtained requested nor directed any of my staff to obtain search results from the California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System while working at Kaiser Chew noted If Kaiser is true to its protocol of conducting fair and thorough investigations in matters of workplace complaints Kaiser knows this announcement is false Their reason for terminating me and numerous others is a complete fabrication His attorney Jon King described the firings as the ugliest example of corporate hardball and politics that I ve ever seen in years of being an attorney He announced Chew worked tirelessly to establish a new unit there and to protect the safety of Kaiser s doctors nurses employees and the thousands of Kaiser patients and visitors Kaiser issued a announcement after being sent direct questions by this newspaper about attainable CLETS violations the measure organization firings and the state of its corporate safety unit Kaiser Permanente takes matters of safeguard and inappropriate behavior amongst our staff seriously When we investigate and confirm evidence of illegal behavior we address it notify law enforcement and cooperate fully with their assessment as appropriate according to the hospital s declaration sent by Kerri Leedy senior manager of residents relations We are committed to fully complying with all applicable laws and regulations and demonstrating high ethical standards in everything we do Law enforcement agencies are required to overview suspected CLETS abuses to the California Department of Justice In for example a record cases were communicated to the state more than of which originated from the Los Angeles County Sheriff s Office according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation a nonprofit digital rights group that obtained those records In all officers were suspended nine were fired and six resigned the foundation shared There is inconsistency in which suspected CLETS abusers are investigated and prosecuted which raises concerns that individual defense the privacy of the members of the masses just aren t a high enough priority for various law enforcement agencies noted Dave Maass director of investigations at the foundation The charges against Kaiser and its shield gang also hint at a broader difficulty he revealed The fact that they felt so brazen about this might be that there s been a tradition of impunity with these kinds of violations Maass explained Mangal and Crum appear to have known each other having partnered at least once in the past several months in a September affair about a man accused of violating a restraining order and making death threats against a psychologist and other Kaiser employees in Oakland Mangal inquired that Crum be sent search warrant details related to the occurrence at Crum s email address with the San Francisco District Attorney s Office where he had worked on and off for the past couple of years Crum was on a part-time basis there from July until he resigned March a source with direct knowledge of his employment dates noted