police officers convicted of a criminal offence 968A/21)
Request
Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, and within the legal timeframe, please can you tell me:
The total number of police officers convicted of a criminal offence since January 1, 2017 to June 24, 2021?
Can you also please tell me the rank of the officer and the offence(s) they were convicted of?
Of that figure, how many lost their jobs over their offending?
Can I please get a year-by-year breakdown of these convictions?
Response
Please accept our apologies for the delay in responding. The request has been with our Professional Standards Department who were trying to ascertain if the information requested is held in a retrievable format. However, due to system and resourcing problems this has taken longer than would usually be anticipated.
Unfortunately, they have established that 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).
I am unable to suggest any practical way in which your request may be modified in order to satisfy your query or bring it within the 18 hours stipulated by the Regulations. I am however willing to consider any refinements that you are able to make to your request, in accordance with Section 16 of the Freedom of Information Act. If you would like to look into refining your request please contact me.
I can advise that our Professional Standards Department are currently reviewing the way that information is electronically stored, as it is not held in a retrievable format in its current state, and to collate this information into a more easily retrievable format. This should allow future requests concerning officer convictions to be achievable within the appropriate (cost) limit of the FOI Act. You may therefore wish to resubmit your request at a future date should you still require the information. However, please note this work is ongoing and there is no completion date as yet for this large piece of work.
REASON FOR DECISION
Please note that researching each individual case would exceed the appropriate limit (FOIA, s.12).
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 confirming or denying that the information is held would exceed the appropriate costs limit under section 12(2) 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.
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