Sgt. Tamara Hardin, 43, a 17-year veteran of the Jacksonville Sheriffs Office, is charged with one count of disclosure of confidential criminal justice information and one count of offenses against users of computers. Both are third-degree felonies.
Hardin, who was arrested and booked into the Duval County Jail on Tuesday morning, opted not to resign, but JSO will move to terminate her employment due to the felony charges. The criminal investigation will need to be completed before JSO can begin the administrative process to terminate her. In the meantime, she will be administrative leave without pay.
JSO was contacted on March 29 by a law enforcement agency in Georgia about a person of interest for their department who had been in contact with Hardin. The Georgian law enforcement agency forwarded that information to JSO's integrity and special investigations unit, which looked into it and found Hardin was using her access to confidential law enforcement databases and releasing that information to the subject, who was a family acquaintance. According to an arrest report, the incident began April 1, 2020, through Nov. 30, 2020.
The person in Georgia was asking if they were wanted and Hardin was running the name through law enforcement databases to let them know if they had warrants against them.
JSO said there's no excuse for that because training on using the databases includes who can have access to the information.
This is the second arrest of an officer in 2021 after the Sheriffs Office arrested 11 of its employees in 2020.