Mr Davis, an inspector at Lake Illawarra Police Station, has spent the past two weeks on trial in the NSW District Court accused of illegally accessing a police database to track down his ex-girlfriend’s vehicle details, then asking her to lie about it when his bosses found out.

Mr Davis was put on paid leave in mid-2016 while the force’s Professional Standards Command investigated the claims.

The investigation resulted in the Director of Public Prosecutions laying two charges against Mr Davis – making an unauthorised access to restrict data and perverting the course of justice.

Mr Davis pleaded not guilty to both charges.

A 12-person jury heard a total of six days worth of evidence spread over the two weeks and were asked to retire to consider their verdict on the perverting the course of justice charge on Wednesday morning. The not guilty verdict was delivered in court on Thursday morning.

During the trial, prosecutors had alleged Mr Davis illegally accessed the NSW Police COPS database in May 2016 to learn the registration number of his estranged girlfriend, Nicole Haywood, following a bitter separation between the former lovers.

When this alleged breach was reported to the command’s superintendent, Davis was alleged to have approached Ms Haywood and asked her to sign a false affidavit that would have legitimised his use of the system.

The Crown case was that Mr Davis had made up an allegation of a car tailgating him on Memorial Drive on the afternoon of May 2 in order to get a fellow officer to access the database and look up the offending vehicle’s registration number. The car turned out to be Ms Haywood’s.

Ms Haywood had given evidence earlier in the trial that she had driven along the road that afternoon but did not see Mr Davis’ car and would never tailgate him as she had been “in hiding” from him since their split three months earlier.

The Crown had alleged when Mr Davis found out about the data breach investigation he approached Ms Haywood and asked her to lie in an affidavit about her whereabouts that day.

The pair’s mutual friend, Danina Scrivenor, told the jury Mr Davis had told both women his solicitor was happy to write the affidavit: “We need to be on the same page….just say you were there”, she alleged he said.

However, Mr Davis took the stand during the trial to deny suggestions that he had made the tailgating incident up – and that Ms Haywood had admitted to him in a subsequent conversation that she had been behind the wheel and had seen him.