Emergency Workers (214/20)
Request
The Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Act 2018 came into force on 13 November 2018.
The Act creates a statutory aggravating factor: Offence was committed against an emergency worker acting in the exercise of functions as such a worker.
1. Please can you disclose the number of attacks on emergency workers since
the new law came into force up to the time this request is answered? Can these figures be broken down month by month?
2. What type of emergency worker was attacked for each offence? Was the emergency care
worker in question male or female? Age?
3. Details of the attacker, gender, age etc for each offence.
4. Details of the attack – what happened in each offence?
5. How many have been charged and sentenced in court for each offence?
6. How many were jailed? Details of the jail sentence and other punishments for each offence.
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 (see 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 order to say the type of emergency worker attacked for each offence would require a manual search of all relevant records, this would exceed the FOI time limit.
We do not hold prosecution details, therefore we have provided crimes by outcome, this is the only information we are able to provide for questions 5 and 6.
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.