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Threats to Kill on Facebook (2801/20)

Request

1. In the (a) 2018 calendar year, and (b) 2019 calendar year how many offences did your force log of “making a threat to kill” where the threat was posted on Facebook?

2. Starting from the month of October 2019 please provide me with copies of the first five MOs that relating to question 1 complete with the wording that was used on Facebook. [Note: To avoid falling into an exemption I am content for names, ages, geography or any other personal detail to be redacted].

Response

We can confirm that some 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 the redacted information.

REASONS FOR DECISION

The redacted information is exempt by virtue of the following exemptions:

Section 30(1) – Investigations

Section 40(2) – Personal Information

These exemptions and explanatory notes are shown here:

https://www.app.college.police.uk/app-content/information-management/freedom-of-information/#freedom-of-information-exemptions

In line with the above, I am required to complete a Prejudice Test/Public Interest Test (PIT) on disclosure. Please find this PIT attached (2801_PIT).

Section 40(2) allows for personal data to be withheld where release would breach the third party’s data protection rights. It would be unfair to release this information where any person could be identified from the data and in this case the right to privacy outweighs any public interest in release.

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.

Attachments

2801_ATTACHMENT

2801_PIT