Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA)

Thank you for your email received today in which you make a request for information that Northumbria Police may hold in accordance with the Freedom Of Information Act 2000

We are in the process of dealing with your request and a response should be provided to you by 30/01/2018 which is in accordance with the legislation.

To note - we are taking it that by 'last 5 years' you refer to 2013, 2014, 2015,2016, & 2017, and that is what will be submitted for research. If that is not correct you will need to advise by return, being specific as to the years you are referring to.

This request will be aggregated with your previously submitted request, 001/18, due to time/cost restrictions, as they are both on the subject of officer/staff misconduct.

Yours sincerely

Information Management Unit

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Provision of information held by Northumbria Police made under the Freedom
of Information Act 2000 (the 'Act')

Thank you for your e mail dated 29 December 2017 in which you made a
request for access to certain information which may be held by Northumbria
Police.

As you may be aware the purpose of the Act is to allow a general right of
access to information held at the time of a request, by a Public Authority
(including the Police), subject to certain limitations and exemptions.

You asked:

Please give me the number of accusations of sexual abuse made against
Northumbria Police officer/s, staff (including former officers) during the
last 5 years.

Please also supply details as follows;

1.    The rank of officer E.g. PC, WPC, Inspector, Supt, ACC ...

2.    Number of case/s that were referred to IPCC (including date/s).

3.    How many cases were investigated, what was the outcome.

4.    How many case/s and or accusations related to children.

5.    Details of the accusations made. I am not requesting personal
information, such as name/s of the officers, just details of the
allegations.

6.    How long did NP investigation/s take in each case, i.e. date
investigation commenced, date completed.

7.    Were any of the officers (including former officers), staff spoken
to, questioned and or arrested as a result of accusations made against
them (or as result of investigation/s).

8.    Who, at ACPO - Chief Officer level - Name/s please , was the AA,
single point of contact and or officer who appointed the investigating
officer/s in each of the cases.

9.    Were any reports, relating to this request, submitted to IPCC and or
the CPS. If they were'

10.  How many

11.  Dates

12.  Reason/s for submitting each report

13.  Outcome, decision/s of IPCC and or CPS in each case

We have now had the opportunity to fully consider your request and I
provide a response for your attention.

Your request has been numbered for ease.

You have submitted 3 requests on the same day for information regarding
the misconduct of police officers/police staff.  As per our
acknowledgements to you for FOIs 003/18 and 011/18 , we advised that, as
your requests were on the same subject matter, Misconduct of police
officers or staff,  your requests would be aggregated due to cost/time
constraints .

I can advise that when considered together, your 3 requests far exceed the
permitted 18 hours and therefore Section 12 is applicable.  Both FOI
003/18 and FOI 011/18 in their own right  exceed the permitted 18 hour
threshold. 

You should consider this to be a refusal notice under Section 17 of the
Act for your request.

As per our comment in FOI 001/18, the reason for each refusal will be
dealt with separately, and with regards to this request I respond as
below:

For the time period requested there have been 21 accusations of sexual
abuse made against Northumbria Police officer/s, staff (including former
officers) during the last 5 years.

Each of those accusations would require manual review to establish a
response to each of the questions posed.

It has been estimated that point 8 alone would take around 30 minutes per
file as  the allocating officer who appointed the investigating officer
would need to be identified, which is not necessarily recorded on PSD
complaints system. This would therefore require them to identify the
appropriate past senior member of staff responsible for each investigating
officer at that time in their service history. This would mean acquiring
and manually reading through the HR/Personnel files of each investigating
officer and confirming if they were they allocating officer of the case. 

This taken with the time to offer a response to the remainder of this
request, and to respond to FOI 011/18 would engage Section 12.

This section does not oblige a public authority to comply with a request
for information if the authority estimated that the cost of complying with
the request would exceed the appropriate limit of 18 hours, equating to
£450.00

You should consider this to be a refusal notice under Section 17 of the
Act for your request.

Additionally we have reached a point where we can no longer justify
continuing to allocate public funds to dealing with your requests. You
have submitted numerous requests of a similar nature in a short period of
time relating to allegations, complaints and disciplinary processes made
against Northumbria Police. Each response is met with a further request or
a request for an internal review.  It is apparent that you have an ongoing
grievance against Northumbria Police.  FOI is not the correct route to air
such grievances, and is a misuse of the Act.  We therefore feel that we
have justification to make any further request on this subject 
vexatious.   

Due to the different methods of recording information across 43 forces, a
specific response from one constabulary should not be seen as an
indication of what information could be supplied (within cost) by another.
Systems used for recording these figures are not generic, nor are the
procedures used locally in capturing the data. For this reason responses
between forces may differ, and should not be used for comparative
purposes.

The information we have supplied to you is likely to contain intellectual
property rights of Northumbria Police. Your use of the information must be
strictly in accordance with the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 (as
amended) or such other applicable legislation. In particular, you must not
re-use this information for any commercial purpose.

You may be interested to know that Northumbria Police routinely publish
information via the Disclosure Log. The aim of the Disclosure Log is to
promote openness and transparency by voluntarily placing information into
the public arena.

The Disclosure Log contains copies of some of the information that has
been disclosed by Northumbria Police in response to requests made under
the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

Whilst it is not possible to publish all responses we will endeavour to
publish those where we feel that the information disclosed is in the wider
public interest.

The Disclosure Log will be updated once responses have been sent to the
requester.

I have provided the relevant link below.

[1]http://www.northumbria.police.uk/freedom...

How to complain

If you are unhappy with our decision or do not consider that we have
handled your request properly and we are unable to resolve this issue
informally, you are entitled to make a formal complaint to us under our
complaints procedure, attached below

[2]http://www.northumbria.police.uk/freedom...

If you are still unhappy after we have investigated your complaint and
reported to you the outcome, you may complain directly to the Information
Commissioner’s Office and request that they investigate to ascertain
whether we have dealt with your request in accordance with the Act.

Yours sincerely

Michael Cleugh

Data Protection and Disclosure Advisor

Direct Dial: 0191 2956941

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