Taser Use (233A/20)
Request
How many members of your force have been issued Tasers for use in day-to-day patrolling.
How many times has an officer deemed the use of a Taser justified? (i.e. how many times has an officer used a Taser on a member of the public?
How many convictions have arisen in cases where a Taser was used?
How many times has the use of a Taser on a member of the public resulted in that
person requiring medical attention?
Can you provide a breakdown of the recorded ethnicity of those who have encountered police and subsequently were tasered.
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 (please 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. I note that you have not specified a time frame for your request, however in order to assist a search was conducted for the financial year 2019/20, please see attached.
In relation to Q2, please be advised that this is not a valid Freedom of information Act request as it does not fulfil Section 8 of the Act. It is not a request for specific recorded information and the authority does not have to answer your question if this would mean creating new information or giving an opinion or judgement that is not already recorded.
REASON FOR DECISION
Please note that researching each individual case would exceed the appropriate limit (FOIA, s.12). In relation to question 3 – We do not hold conviction data, this information is held by Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service. For question 4 – In order to locate and retrieve this information would require a manual review of incident logs and custody records, which would exceed the FOI time limit.
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: