TV Licensing search warrant attendances.
Dear Nottinghamshire Police,
I am making this request for information under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
Please provide me with the following information:
1. The number of times constables of Nottingham Constabulary have attended the execution of search warrants granted under section 366 of the Communications Act 2003. Please provide this information for 2011 and up to date 24th October 2012. For the avoidance of confusion these search warrants are granted to Capita Business Services Ltd acting on behalf of the BBC and TV Licensing.
2. The associated costs to the Nottinghamshire council tax payer in respect of the police attendances (if any.)
Yours faithfully,
Mr. Williams
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Freedom of Information
Nottinghamshire Police
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Dear Doyle Williams
Please find attached our response to your Freedom of Information request
submitted to Nottinghamshire Police and details of your right to appeal.
Kind regards,
Lehan Merrin
Disclosure Officer
Information Management
Sherwood Lodge
Arnold
Nottingham
NG5 8PP
8 [1][email address]
' Data Protection: 101 x. 800 2526
Business number: 0115 9672526
Fax: 0115 9672896
Unless otherwise stated please treat as restricted
Internet e-mail is not to be treated as a secure means of communication.
Nottinghamshire Police monitors all Internet e-mail activity and content. This
communication is intended for the addressee(s) only. Please notify the sender if
received in error. Unauthorised use or disclosure of the content may be
unlawful. There is no intent, by Nottinghamshire Police, that this e-mail should
constitute a legally binding document, nor do opinions expressed herein
necessarily represent official policy.
Find out about Nottinghamshire Police by visiting
[2]www.nottinghamshire.police.uk
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Gadawodd Web User anodiad ()
Based on the response from the Disclosure Officer (think that was the title at end of document sent in response), it's clearly time for general law enforcement and statistics that all members of the Police should have some better method of logging their day-to-day activities.
I know that sounds a bit too "Big Brother" for some but if the data is collected but FOI requests are rejected because of inefficient methods of searching, we should surely want more efficient searching to allow the FOI to give us, the public, results. I have no doubt that if there was some special reason for the Chief Constable to want the information, it would be found even if it went past the 18 hours that can be allowed for an FOI request. The information may not be easy to access and makes refusals to FOI all the easier *and* if it was easier, it would benefit *both* Police and FOI requestors!
We should make representation to Home Office, PCC and so forth to bring the "pocket notebooks" up to date! (Not ranty politics, just humble opinion of how it would serve Police and public to do so.)
With 2000+ officers, and an estimate of 45 minutes for a search per pocket notebook, it's clear that if some (unidentified) officer had been seen at a location, there'd be no fast way to determine from their own logs just who it was.
Not suggesting anything illicit done by an officer, but that from a "search notebooks" aspect, there must be some more efficient way to check on activities.
One would hope that a central log of all control room communication {eg "<PC sjsjsj 1234> please visit 123 XYZ Street, Sometown, PostCode to see <someone> about <event>" could be transcribed by audio detection and timestamped and merged so week on week, month on month, year on year, any calls related to PC 1234 or <some address> and even <event> [ in this case "act on a search warrant" if <someone> included "<name> from TV Licencing"] might be more easily found.
It would not just assist a Force in determining hotspots, history of violence, etc, at some place, but for FOI requests such as this one
A search might uncover statistics making it impossible to comply on the grounds the work of retrieving, checking (how much can be disclosed) and releasing to the inquiror would exceed the 18 hours, but just the initial "Our initial search indicates 321 events in 2011 and 278 in 2012, but the time taken to process all the requested items would exceed 18 hours so in part this request is refused.
{It might then allow subsequent requests to determine how many by month, how many by town, and cut to numbers where the FOIA could cause disclosure, because dealing with XX "events" in one city in one month would not generate an excess of documents to review}
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Gadawodd doyle williams anodiad ()
Thank you. I will contact you on the number provided to discuss the topic.