All these giant data leaks are coming from the government's "tamper proof" systems!

I know, and it's really the trade-off whenever this sort of system is centralized: you can better secure the leafs, but the central repository becomes an even juicier target.

This said, the police already has a database with these info, and it likely is somehow already on the network, so adding an api (if done properly) would not dramatically alter the exposure profile.