{"id":805482,"date":"2026-05-18T16:50:24","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T16:50:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/805482\/"},"modified":"2026-05-18T16:50:24","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T16:50:24","slug":"trial-begins-as-wa-police-assistant-commissioner-gailene-hamilton-accused-of-stalking-subordinate-officer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/805482\/","title":{"rendered":"Trial begins as WA police assistant commissioner Gailene Hamilton accused of stalking subordinate officer"},"content":{"rendered":"

A WA police assistant commissioner has gone on trial accused of stalking a subordinate officer and using a restricted computer system to track her movements to try and salvage a friendship.<\/p>\n

Gailene Sharron Hamilton is accused of continuing to contact the woman after she asked her to stop, and the officer said she didn’t feel “comfortable” with the friendship.<\/p>\n

Ms Hamilton was stood down last year and the charges relate to alleged incidents in 2024 and 2025.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

The assistant commissioner is accused of illegally accessing police computer systems. (ABC News: David Weber)<\/p>\n

Prosecutor James Bennett told the court it was a “story of a friendship gone wrong” and Ms Hamilton allegedly stalked the female officer “in order to maintain some personal or social connection”.<\/p>\n

Mr Bennett said the pair had become friends in late 2023 and early 2024, communicating with texts and phone calls, leading up to home visits.<\/p>\n

Visits ‘became intrusive’<\/p>\n

The prosecutor said the complainant felt the amount of time Ms Hamilton stayed at her home “became intrusive”.<\/p>\n

The woman asked Ms Hamilton to stop contacting her on January 8 last year, but the \u00a0messages, calls and emails continued.<\/p>\n

Mr Bennett said only some of these communications were work-related, and the complainant suffered “fear, anxiety and distress”.<\/p>\n

The complainant spoke to an inspector who asked that work-related communications between the superintendent and the officer went through him.<\/p>\n

\"Prosecutor<\/p>\n

Prosecutor James Bennett says the complainant experienced anxiety over the alleged repeated attempts at contact. (ABC News: David Weber)<\/p>\n

The prosecutor told the court the woman then felt “much better”.<\/p>\n

But in May 2025, he said, Ms Hamilton \u2014 now promoted to assistant commissioner \u2014 attended a work conference and turned up at the woman’s office “unannounced”, pressuring her to “catch up”.<\/p>\n

The prosecutor said Ms Hamilton allegedly unlawfully used a restricted access computer system four times in 2024 and 2025.<\/p>\n

He said the system, known as SILVA, <\/strong>had a ‘”locate” function which could track officers when they were at work, and Ms Hamilton used it to check the complainant’s location.<\/p>\n

Complainant felt ‘smothered’<\/p>\n

Taking the stand in court, the woman said she saw herself as a “sounding board for the super” and was happy for her to stay at her home on occasion.<\/p>\n

She told the court the “visits became quite frequent” and she “didn’t feel comfortable with it but I couldn’t verbalise that”.<\/p>\n

She said she didn’t want to cause offence, but she “just didn’t want Gailene staying as often as she did”.<\/p>\n

\"Gailene<\/p>\n

Ms Hamilton has been stood down as assistant commissioner. (ABC News)<\/p>\n

The officer told the court she wasn’t comfortable with the friendship because a superintendent had the power to make life difficult.<\/p>\n

“I have seen bad behaviour,” she said.<\/p>\n

“I had seen people treated badly when someone doesn’t like you,” she told the court.<\/p>\n

The officer said when she eventually confronted Ms Hamilton, she told her “I feel like I’m in a relationship” and felt “smothered”, after which Ms Hamilton started to cry.<\/p>\n

“I felt bad, I felt mean,” the officer told the court.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Both the complainant and Ms Hamilton were working for WA police. (ABC News: Keane Bourke)<\/p>\n

When Ms Hamilton offered her own home for the woman to stay in during a temporary transfer, the officer said she turned her down.<\/p>\n

“Lots of messages came after that,” the officer told the court, with Ms Hamilton asking to have a conversation about it.<\/p>\n

It led the woman to sending a message she said she’d “never sent” to anyone before.<\/p>\n

“Please stop contacting me,” her message to Ms Hamilton said.<\/p>\n

She told the court she thought that would be enough to stop the contact but “it continued”.<\/p>\n

\"Central<\/p>\n

The trial is taking place in the Perth Magistrates Court. (ABC News: Keane Bourke)<\/p>\n

Ms Hamilton’s lawyer Andrew Culshaw has said his client was attempting to contact the woman in relation to the breakdown of their friendship.<\/p>\n

Mr Culshaw said the complainant was “overwhelmed by the defendant and was trying to distance herself”.<\/p>\n

The identity of the complainant has been suppressed for legal reasons.<\/p>\n

Ms Hamilton has pleaded not guilty to one charge of pursuing another to intimidate from January to April 2025, and four charges of unlawfully using a computer system in 2024 and 2025.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A WA police assistant commissioner has gone on trial accused of stalking a subordinate officer and using a…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":805483,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2],"tags":[4740,327844,50,8634,8631,327842,327845,327843,8633,8632],"class_list":["post-805482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-australia","tag-gailene-hamilton-trial","tag-news","tag-perth-courts","tag-perth-news","tag-police-assistant-commissioner-trial","tag-police-stalker","tag-police-trial","tag-wa-courts","tag-wa-news"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=805482"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805482\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/805483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=805482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=805482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=805482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}