Digital Devices (1273A/21)
Request
- Please provide the number and a breakdown of digital devices, eg mobile phones/laptops/desktop computers/games consoles/cameras, belonging to victims of crime waiting to be forensically examined by your force as of today’s date?
- Please provide the number of cases to which the aforementioned digital devices relate, which are waiting to be forensically examined as of today’s date?
- Please provide the number of Forensic Digital Examiners currently employed by your force’s High Tech Crime Unit or in Kiosk facilities to examine digital devices, eg mobile
phones/laptops/desktop computers/games consoles/cameras. Please include any other
police officers or staff with titles other than Forensic Digital Examiners who are assigned to this task, and please include other departments other than the High Tech Crime Unit/Kiosk facilities if applicable. - Please state the force’s target time frame (in days) for digital devices to be examined –
Digital Forensics Unit and Digital Hubs only. - Please confirm whether the force has met that aforementioned target time frame in each of the past five financial years (including the year to date)?
Response
We can confirm that relevant information is held by West Midlands Police. However, while the majority of the information is attached to this email, I am not required to release all of the information requested. Please find attached our response.
REASONS FOR DECISION
The withheld information is exempt by virtue of the following exemption:
Section 31(1)(a)(b) – Law enforcement
This exemption and explanatory notes are shown here:
In line with the above, I am required to complete a Prejudice Test/Public Interest Test (PIT) on disclosure. Please find this PIT attached (1273A_PIT).
Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that these data have been extracted from a number of data sources used by forces for police purposes. The detail collected to respond specifically to your request is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large scale recording system. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when interpreting those data.
The figures provided therefore are our best interpretation of relevance of data to your request, but you should be aware that the collation of figures for ad hoc requests may have limitations and this should be taken into account when those data are used.
If you decide to write an article / use the enclosed data we would ask you to take into consideration the factors highlighted in this document so as to not mislead members of the public or official bodies, or misrepresent the relevance of the whole or any part of this disclosed material.