Internal Complaints Against Ethnic Minority Officers (1790A/23)
Request
I am requesting information WMP hold on internal complaints against ethnic minority Officers. This includes Officers of all Ranks.
I request the information for the following years: 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023.
- How many internal complaints were against ethnic minority Officers? A breakdown for all the above years.
- How many internal complaints were filed against ethnic minority Officers? A breakdown for all the above years.
- How many internal complaints against ethnic minority Officers were considered malicious? A breakdown for all the above years.
Response
Our data are not organised in such a way as to allow us to provide this information within the appropriate (cost) limit of the Freedom of Information Act (see ‘Reason for decision’ below).
If to comply with one part of a request would exceed the appropriate limit, then we are not obliged to comply with the remaining parts of the request or search for and provide information up to the limit.
However, 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 questions 1 and 2 of your request (see attached file 1790A_23_attachment.pdf). 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
Regarding question 3, it is not possible to determine this information without going into, and manually reviewing, the records of each of the cases identified in question 2. Such a search however, even on its own and not taking into account the time already spent for questions 1 and 2, would exceed the appropriate limit (FOIA, s.12).
This means that 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.
Further information on section 12 of FOI is available here: