Complaints and Crime Recording (178A/21)
Request
The police have duties in relation to impartiality and conflicts of interest. Does the WMP have a policy or guidelines to ensure they remain impartial and avoid conflicts of interest? If it does, can you please supply that policy or direct me to where it can be located?
The police have duties in relation to record serious crime that is reported to them. The public rely upon the police doing that. The public trust that, for example, a police officer would not fail to record or investigate a crime because it involved them or their associates. Consequently, is this crime recording log available? If the log is not available, please outline how the public can access information to ascertain if a crime has been recorded and when?
The public’s trust with the police is founded upon the understanding that the police properly investigate complaints against officers, particularly serious complaints against senior officers. The public trust that, for example, senior officers within the WMP declined to investigate complaints which may impact upon fellow senior officers. Consequently, for each of the years between the years 2000 and 2020, please outline separately:
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- The number of complaints lodged against officers of the rank Inspector and above?
- How many of these complaints were investigated?
- How many of these complaints were upheld?
- How many of these complaints led to misconduct proceedings or prosecution?
- Where appropriate, please indicate in each year how many of those officers were linked to FCID?
Response
Our data are not organised in such a way as to allow us to provide this information within the appropriate (cost) limit within the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act (see ‘Reason for Decision’ below).
Although excess cost removes the force’s obligations under the Freedom of Information Act, as a gesture of goodwill I have supplied information, relative to your request, retrieved before it was realised that the fees limit would be exceeded (attached). I trust this is helpful, but it does not affect our legal right to rely on the fees regulations for the remainder of the request.
REASON FOR DECISION
Please note that researching each individual case would exceed the appropriate limit (FOIA, s.12). In relation to question 3D – This data is not accurate and would require a manual check of each case in order to locate and retrieve this information, this would exceed the FOI time limit.
The cost of compliance with the whole of your request is above the amount to which we are legally required to respond, i.e. the cost of locating and retrieving the information would exceed the appropriate costs limit under section 12(1) of the FOI Act 2000. For West Midlands Police, the appropriate limit is set at £450, as prescribed by the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004, S.I. 3244.