OAKLAND — Kaiser Permanente has fired a top corporate security official, along with a number of his underlings, amid allegations that an Oakland police officer shared information from a highly confidential criminal database with the health care giant.

According to multiple sources, an Oakland police officer is accused of researching people in the California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System, then passing along the information to at least one former police officer working for Kaiser.

The brewing scandal could stretch well beyond its apparent origins in Oakland, both because of Kaiser’s large West Coast footprint and the breadth of the database. It also could lead to criminal charges as it is illegal under state law to use the database, known by the acronym CLETS, for non-law enforcement purposes. It contains residents’ criminal history, driving records and links to national law enforcement databases.

The number of individuals the Oakland officer is accused of checking is not known, but multiple sources said the searches related to threats made against at least one Kaiser employee. Experts say such an information release is a serious breach that could expose details that should never be shared with anyone outside of a criminal case, even former cops.

“There are an infinite number of ways that this information could be abused,” said W. David Ball, a professor of criminal law at Santa Clara University’s School of Law. “The power it has is it’s comprehensive; that’s also the danger.”

Multiple sources with direct knowledge of the situation identified the Oakland officer as Khyber Mangal, a veteran officer whose assignments in his decade-plus career include patrol, investigating violent crimes and working with the city’s crime-reduction Ceasefire program. He’s also a member of the U.S. Marshals task force.

The Oakland Police Department has opened an internal affairs inquiry and a criminal investigation to determine if Mangal improperly accessed the criminal database and whether he knew the information would end up at Kaiser, the sources said. He was on administrative leave as of Friday afternoon, according to an email from the department’s communications team.

Multiple attempts by this newspaper to reach Mangal or an attorney representing him were unsuccessful.

The sources said the data is believed to have ended up with a private Kaiser security team working under Craig Chew, the national director of corporate security investigations for Kaiser, headquartered in Oakland.

Chew entered the private security world after a nearly 40-year career in East Bay law enforcement, most recently as the chief of inspectors at the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office, where he worked until he was fired without cause in a massive staff shakeup by then-District Attorney Pamela Price after she took office in January 2023. He later filed a lawsuit against Alameda County over his dismissal, claiming Price stoked a culture of racial discrimination against Asian Americans.

According to multiple sources, Chew brought several former Oakland police officers to work under him at Kaiser, including Omega Crum, who also formerly worked as a part-time investigator at the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office. Reached by phone, Crum hung up, and other attempts to reach him were unsuccessful.

After learning of the allegations, Kaiser terminated several members of its security detail, according to the sources and Chew, but the identities of those fired employees have not been made public. Other people working in Kaiser corporate security, which includes former law enforcement officers from other parts of the Bay Area as well as Southern California, either did not respond to requests for comment or declined to talk.

Reached this week, Chew said he did not want to “go into detail” about the situation, but sought to distance himself from it.

“I can state that I never illegally obtained, requested nor directed any of my staff to obtain search results from the California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System while working at Kaiser,” Chew said. “If Kaiser is true to its policy of conducting fair and thorough investigations in matters of workplace complaints, Kaiser knows this statement is false. Their reason for terminating me, and many others, is a complete fabrication.”

His attorney, Jon King, described the firings as “the ugliest example of corporate hardball and politics that I’ve ever seen in 25 years of being an attorney.” He said Chew “worked tirelessly to establish a new unit there and to protect the safety of Kaiser’s doctors, nurses, employees and the thousands of Kaiser patients and visitors.”

Kaiser issued a statement after being sent direct questions by this newspaper about possible CLETS violations, the security team firings and the state of its corporate security unit.

“Kaiser Permanente takes matters of security and inappropriate behavior amongst our staff seriously. When we investigate and confirm evidence of illegal behavior, we address it, notify law enforcement and cooperate fully with their investigation, as appropriate,” according to the hospital’s statement sent by Kerri Leedy, senior manager of public relations. “We are committed to fully complying with all applicable laws and regulations and demonstrating high ethical standards in everything we do.”

Law enforcement agencies are required to report suspected CLETS abuses to the California Department of Justice. In 2023, for example, a record 7,275 cases were reported to the state — more than 90% of which originated from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit digital rights group that obtained those records. In all, 24 officers were suspended, nine were fired, and six resigned, the foundation reported.

There is inconsistency in which suspected CLETS abusers are investigated and prosecuted, which raises concerns that “individual security — the privacy of the members of the public — just aren’t a high enough priority” for many law enforcement agencies, said Dave Maass, director of investigations at the foundation. The allegations against Kaiser and its security team also hint at a broader problem, he said.

“The fact that they felt so brazen about this might be that there’s been a culture of impunity with these kinds of violations,” Maass said.

Mangal and Crum appear to have known each other, having partnered at least once in the past several months, in a September 2024 case about a man accused of violating a restraining order and making death threats against a psychologist and other Kaiser employees in Oakland.

Mangal asked that Crum be sent search warrant details related to the case at Crum’s email address with the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office, where he had worked on and off for the past couple of years. Crum was on a part-time basis there from July 2024 until he resigned March 4, a source with direct knowledge of his employment dates said.