As if the Los Angeles Police Department hasn't had enough problems the past few years, now questions arise as to whether an officer used police computers to prowl celebrity law enforcement records and sell the information to tabloid publications.
Thirteen-year department veteran Kelly Chrisman acknowledged getting the information, according to published and broadcast reports, but denied selling any of the information and insisted he looked it up in the first place on superior orders. He did that, he said, on behalf of creating a specialized map identifying celebrity homes in emergencies.
But that's not how his former girlfriend, Cyndy Truhan, saw it. She sued Chrisman after learning she was one of the celebrities he was looking up, according to the Associated Press - and Los Angeles paid $387,500 last month to settle the lawsuit. Who's Cyndy Truhan? You may remember her better Cyndy Garvey - a broadcast personality and the former wife of retired baseball star Steve Garvey.
Her lawsuit accused Chrisman of gathering information similarly about such celebrities as actors Jennifer Aniston, Lara Flynn Boyle, Peter Horton, Sean Penn, and others; basketball star Kobe Bryant; O.J. Simpson and his late former wife, Nicole; and others.
Chrisman's attorney - Christopher Darden, ironically one of the prosecutors in Simpson's murder trial - insisted his client never sold any of the information he gathered. But state and federal law ban the unauthorized use of police computers, and the LAPD is still investigating whether Chrisman did or didn't sell the celebrity information he gathered up.
