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Taxpayers set to pay out for trial

Taxpayers will fork out more than $10,000 for the trial of a former WA Police Officer of the Year after he was acquitted. Picture: Clare Kenyon

Taxpayers will fork out more than $10,000 for the trial of a former WA Police Officer of the Year after he was acquitted of fraudulently falsifying records.

Magistrate Nick Lemmon yesterday found former Laverton Senior Constable Rex Weldon not guilty, declaring the prosecution had failed to prove one of the key elements of the charge.

Weldon was fined $3750 for four counts of unlawfully using a police computer, charges to which he pleaded guilty before the trial began.

Weldon stood accused of deliberately providing false information in his capacity as chairman of the Mount Margaret Aboriginal Corporation to the Department of Corrective Services in 2013.

Prosecutor Jade Harman claimed Weldon told the DCS his wife's nephew, Grant Bonney, had completed 12 hours community service in October 2013 - something she argued the former officer knew to be false.

The State's case placed heavy weight on a phone call between Weldon and wife Shaneane, during which the latter was heard to say Mr Bonney had not completed any community service that week.

But Mr Lemmon yesterday said the poor quality of the connection, and the fact Weldon never acknowledged his wife's comments, meant the call could not be relied on as evidence.

Defence counsel Darren Jones successfully applied for court costs of $14,500 - a bill taxpayers will foot, minus the fines Weldon has been ordered to pay.

Two of the charges to which Weldon pleaded guilty involved him accessing information for family members, who were concerned for the safety of a schizophrenic relative who had gone missing.

A third charge related to the former officer checking the status of his nephew's driver's licence, while the last involved Weldon obtaining information regarding a car his friend wanted to buy.

Mr Lemmon said the charges were at the lower end of the scale, although he acknowledged the prosecution's submission that Weldon's actions represented a "misuse of public power".

Speaking to the Kalgoorlie Miner after yesterday's verdict, WA Police Union senior vice-president Brandon Shortland said Weldon had suffered "irreversible personal and professional damage" as a result of the trial.

"This trial was a result of a Corruption and Crime Commission inquiry that spent countless hours, extraordinary resources and thousands of taxpayers' dollars to target a WA Police employee for an extremely minor issue," he said.

"Once the CCC had presumed he was guilty without any proper cause, it then passed the inquiry onto the WA Police Professional Standards Portfolio, which made the same assumptions and manufactured a case to fit its desired outcome.

"WA Police and the State of Western Australia have now wasted many resources and lost a good officer with many years of irreplaceable experience for no good reason."