Coronavirus – Fines and Arrests (112A/20)
Request
1. What is the total number of Lockdown fines issued for members of the public whom have been travelling to non-essential journeys from the start of lockdown when the government had passed the necessary measures for UK forces to legally issue said fines to yesterday (27/04/2020) as we are only in the morning of today so numbers for today could rise. (Total number for the entire region of which west Midlands police cover)
2. Total number of general non-specific crimes reported since the very start of lock down (23/03/2020) (total number for the entire region of which west Midlands police cover)
3. Total number of (Q2) crimes reported that had been attended to or in any way progressed from just a report. (So whether those whom had been victim in said crimes saw any response from west Midlands’s police) (Total number for the entire region of which west Midlands police cover)
Response
In relation to Question 1 – Our data are not organised in centrally retrievable format to allow us to provide this information within the appropriate (cost) limit within the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act Information in relation to FPNs is not held in an electronically retrievable format so each officer would need to be contacted to see whether they had issued an individual with a notice for a fixed penalty. In relation to question 3 we would need to manually locate and retrieve all crimes during this time to see if an officer attended the victim.
In relation to question 2 – this is broad in terms that it is trying to capture any and all data during the time period. We do not have a category of non- specific crimes.
Therefore the cost of providing you with the information is above the amount to which we are legally required to respond i.e. the cost of locating and retrieving the information exceeds the ‘appropriate level’ as stated in the Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004.
In accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000, this letter acts as a Refusal Notice for this part of the request and if one part of a request exceeds the fees limit then S12 of the Act applies to the whole request
However, In accordance with Section 16 of the Act I have a duty to provide advice and assistance in relation to your request and can However to assist I can advise that FPN data will be published in future by ACRO who are responsible for collating and issuing fines to individuals.
Please see link below.
This should not be taken as a precedent that additional information would be supplied outside of the time/fees legislation for any subsequent requests
Further information on section 12 of FOI is available here:
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