- Sergeant Richard Cretney fined after admitting he passed confidential police information to his father – a former Deputy Chief Constable
- Conviction comes just days after Sergeant Sophie Watterson-Jones and Constable Mark Hempsall were sacked for altering data on the force computer system
- All three officers had appeared before the courts on data-related charges – raising fresh questions over access to sensitive information inside the Isle of Man Constabulary
The Isle of Man Constabulary has been hit by a second damaging police-data case within days after a serving sergeant admitted passing confidential information to his father, a former senior officer.
Sergeant Richard Cretney, 46, pleaded guilty to knowingly or recklessly disclosing personal data without consent after confidential information obtained through the police system was shared with his father, former Deputy Chief Constable Alan Cretney.
His conviction on September 15 came only four days after the Constabulary announced that Sergeant Sophie Watterson-Jones, 36, and Constable Mark Hempsall, 58, had been dismissed without notice following their convictions for unauthorised modification of police computer data.
The three officers had previously appeared in court facing a combined series of data-related charges. In August 2025, Cretney faced seven allegations of disclosing personal data, while Hempsall and Watterson-Jones faced allegations concerning disclosure and modification of police data.
The cases have subsequently been resolved separately and not all of the original allegations resulted in convictions.
Cretney admitted one offence. Six other disclosure charges against him were dismissed. He had originally been due to stand trial before High Bailiff James Brooks before changing his plea to guilty.
The court heard his phone had been seized by police in April 2024 and examined. Messages were discovered between Cretney and his father concerning an incident in which a woman was alleged to have impersonated a police officer.
Cretney also sent his father a screenshot from an internal police system.
Prosecutor Kath Johnson told the court that Cretney had no need to access the information or send it to his father and described his actions as a serious breach of the trust placed in a serving officer.
High Bailiff Brooks described Cretney’s behaviour as inexplicable and compared him to a child who was “giddy with gossip”.
The officer’s barrister, Stephen Wood, stressed that the incident should be distinguished from the separate Watterson-Jones and Hempsall case, saying no data had been altered and describing the breach as limited in scope.
He told the court Cretney had previously enjoyed an exemplary record and regarded his father – a former Deputy Chief Constable – as a mentor.
The court was told Cretney had been suspended since April 2024 and that his policing career had effectively come to an end.
He was fined £800 and ordered to pay £600 costs.
But the conviction follows remarkably closely behind another embarrassing case involving the force’s databases.
Watterson-Jones and Hempsall each admitted unauthorised modification of police data after the sexuality recorded for Watterson-Jones’s former husband was changed from “no entry” to “homosexual” on the Constabulary’s Connect computer system.
Messages recovered from Watterson-Jones’s phone showed the two officers discussing the alteration.
Although the defence characterised what happened as a childish or “juvenile” prank, magistrates stressed that the real damage was to public confidence in the police.
Both officers were fined £2,000 and ordered to pay £500 prosecution costs before special-case misconduct hearings concluded that they had breached professional standards.
On September 11, the Constabulary confirmed both had been dismissed without notice.
Superintendent Dave Dobbie, of the force’s Professional Standards Department, said officers who breached professional standards undermined the trust placed in them by both colleagues and the public, adding that such conduct would not be tolerated.
The prosecution had previously decided not to proceed with several separate allegations against Watterson-Jones and Hempsall of knowingly or recklessly disclosing personal data. Those allegations were not admitted by the officers, and prosecutors said it was not in the public interest to take them to trial.
The distinction is important.
But within the space of just days, the Manx public has nevertheless learned that three serving officers – including two sergeants – have been convicted over improper use of police information or computer systems.
One Isle of Man resident who contacted Expose.News about the recent police failures added: “For a force now publicly stressing integrity and professionalism, these cases undermine public confidence.
“The data breaches raise a wider question: how robust were the controls governing officers’ access to sensitive police information. Have those safeguards now been strengthened? I think we need to know this.”
ENDS
