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I am French and there are rumors that some people inside the police forces are earning side money by funneling information from the police files to former police officer working as private investigators (with the advantage of having insider access to police data).

I always assumed that this practice was widespread. That is just an extension of the traditional practice of "tricoche" (police officers performing investigations for private customers).

It is obvious that former police officer working as private have their relation network. This makes former police officer so valuable. Active officers trust them and want them to succeed (they may need to go private themself one day). I have not heard about money transfer. This may happen sometimes at small scale, but corruption is a very sensible subject in police. People do not want to be caught as corrupt. This is very damaging to reputation.

You are willing to believe that someone may be mentally ill, desperate, alcoholic, acting to expose internal weaknesses or a spy but you are unwilling to believe money as a motive.

Work in police exposes people to many traumatic situations. You may encounter very tragic situations or cases where your efforts to help result in more damages. Facing a gun is traumatic. This work can hurt even the strongest and can ruin their life. I have more difficulties to imagine these people selling their soul just for money. Often it is easier to leave police for better paid private activities.

It seems that maybe you ought to do some deeper research into the subject. Here are some good topics to get you started:

Corruption in the Baltimore Police Department.

The Seven Five (a documentary about NYPD corruption.)

Operation Countryman - https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/aug/19/files-shed-l...

Corruption in France: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/05/us-france-police-c...

Corruption in the DEA: https://www.google.com/amp/s/arstechnica.com/tech-policy/201...

IMHO, corruption in french police is not widespread. The situation of police in Marseille (your link) is very extreme and not really representative of the whole country. The optimistic view is that police is fighting very hard to stop corruption and even in terrible places like Marseille, they have succeded to stop a big case.

> I have more difficulties to imagine these people selling their soul just for money.

Despite what you seem to think, police are not more righteous or just than any other person, as we've seen through the constant abuse, corruption, and violence perpetrated by LEO and intelligence agencies. In fact, due to the kind of people drawn to the positions and the screening to filter out people who are too intelligent to blindly follow the state, I would argue that "these people are in fact MORE likely to fall for corruption or "sell their soul just for money" as you say

>This does not match with my understanding of police

Sounds right in line with my understanding of police

>I would expect to see many smart people who have a true vocation for the service

Too bad we end up with, partially due to agencies screening for the particular personality types they can use and control, power tripping sycophants with no critical thinking abilities who will blindly follow the state while simultaneously breaking the rules they're meant to enforce for personal gain

>but I would not expect to see greedy treators. Maybe, I have a crazy theory

It sounds like you have an incredibly idealistic view of police officers due to your father, which is understandable.

>What if this guy was selling this data to try to catch big fishes ?

Highly, highly unlikely

>A person frustrated by the inertia or other ineffectivity of the service and experiencing other difficulties in their life may fall into this madness.

This sounds like a poor excuse to defend crooked LEO

> I think they have regular psychological assessment because this job is very hard.

They have psychological assessments so the government can ensure they will follow orders, have no dissenting opinions, and will blindly defend other LEO/intelligence officers even when they are in the wrong

This happens in every intelligence service, in every country.

That's why intelligence personel are themselves usually subject to surveillance and intelligence.

Private data is power and power corrupts people. The only real solution is not to have that data in the first place

It looks like a chicken, acts like a chicken, talks like a chicken, so it must secretly be a horse...

Conveniently, there's another post on police officers today

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18147076

Police in France is very very different of police in the different states of US.

You say that, and yet here we are discussing French police corruption that is exactly like what occurs in the US