Abuse of Power Police (502A/23)
Request
Please provide the following answers relating to allegations of abuse of position for a sexual purpose broken down by each of the last five calendar years including 2022 for each answer:
1/ The number of allegations of abuse of position for a sexual purpose made against staff.
2/ The highest number of allegations made against an individual officer over the entirety of the period. Please also state if the individual has been dismissed.
3/ All misconduct outcomes relating to allegations, including the number of staff members who were dismissed as a result of the allegation.
4/ All criminal outcomes of allegations broken down by a) charges and b) convictions.
5/ The number of allegations a) investigated and then b) upheld by i) PSD and ii) IOPC.
You then added further on 28th March 2023:
*CLARIFICATION* Please can you restrict the response to this request to police officers only and not include police staff such as PCSOs. Ideally, please provide data for PCSOs in addition but there is no need to.
Response
Our data are not organised in such a way as to allow us to provide some of 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 (see enclosed). I trust this is helpful, but it does not affect our legal right to rely on the fee’s regulations for the remainder of the request.
Please provide the following answers relating to allegations of abuse of position for a sexual purpose broken down by each of the last five calendar years including 2022 for each answer:
Under the 2012 Police (Conduct) Regulations, which ran Feb 2012-2020, there was not an allegation type for APSP, and therefore anything prior to 01/02/2020 is not held in a retrievable format for this request. To find the appropriate answers, a manual search through thousands of files at approximately five minutes per file, which would take over 100 hours over the appropriate 18-hour limit. Therefore, the answers below are from 1st Feb 2020.
For this request we have searched conduct and complaints and have included Police officers only as per your clarification.
1/ The number of allegations of abuse of position for a sexual purpose made against Police Officers.
Please note that this is number of allegations, not officers or individual complaints/conduct matters. A single officer or complaint/conduct matter can have multiple allegations placed onto it.
2020: 6 allegations
2021: 8 allegations
2022: 8 allegations
2/ The highest number of allegations made against an individual officer over the entirety of the period. Please also state if the individual has been dismissed.
The highest number of allegations against an individual officer was 4 allegations. The matter is still ongoing, and the officer has not been dismissed at this time.
3/ All misconduct outcomes relating to allegations, including the number of Police Officers who were dismissed as a result of the allegation.
Please note as above these allegation outcomes are for cases opened 2020-2022 and that have now been finalised. It does not include any ongoing matters or complaints that were resolved by service recovery.
2020:
0 outcomes
2021:
0 outcomes
2022:
0 outcomes
Please note that live and sub judices’ conduct matters will not yet have outcomes.
4/ All criminal outcomes of allegations broken down by a) charges and b) convictions.
There have been no criminal outcomes from the above APSP allegations and therefore no convictions.
5/ The number of allegations a) investigated and then b) upheld by i) PSD and ii) IOPC
As per the tables below, from the above:
The below are allegations from conduct and complaint cases sent to our investigations team and does not include allegations from complaints that were dealt with solely by our service recovery team.
a) Allegations investigated
| 2020 | 3 |
| 2021 | 8 |
| 2022 | 8 |
b-i) Allegations upheld by PSD
Conduct matters referred are not upheld: there is ‘case to answer’ (proven) and ‘no case to answer’ (not proven) – in order to answer this question, we have treated ‘case to answer’ to be include with ‘upheld’ results. Complaints can be upheld (proven), however.
Due to the similar nature, below are allegations that are either case to answer or upheld. Some matters are live and will not have outcomes at this stage.
| 2020 | 0 |
| 2021 | 0 |
| 2022 | 0 |
b-ii) Allegations upheld by the IOPC
When an APSP conduct matter is referred, it is sent to the IOPC automatically. As per b-i) the matter is either ‘case to answer’ or ‘no case to answer’. Conduct matters do not get ‘upheld’ by the IOPC. When sent to the IOPC, they will either take on the investigation or return it to us for local investigation.
When a complaint comes in, it can go to the IOPC for a review if service recovery fails, and that review can be upheld if the subject is proven to have committed the alleged breach of standards.
Due to this difference, we cannot answer this part of the question as we cannot provide an accurate and complete answer, as the information is not recorded in a retrievable format.
| 2020 | |
| 2021 | |
| 2022 |
Attachments
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