Information to show what constitutes a complaint that can be handled under local resolution

The request was partially successful.

Dear Independent Police Complaints Commission,

As I understand it from your enquiries line, police forces are allowed to classify certain complaints for local resolution. Such complaints would involve subject matters that if proved could not lead to a misconduct or criminal case against the officer and hence as I understand them would primarily be instances of complaints against prescribed police process.

However in some instances a process may involved a judgement call by a police officer and this may result in a complaint and hence I assume in these cases the complaint about the result of the judgement call would not be eligible for local resolution unless covered by the statement below.

This said there may be other subject matters that are sufficiently minor so as that, if they were proved, could not lead to a misconduct or criminal case against the officer involved.

Our local police classify complaints under the following titles:

Serious non-sexual assault
Sexual Assault
Other Assault
Oppressive Conduct or Harassment,
Unlawful/Unnecessary arrest or detention,
Discriminatory behaviour,
Irregularity in evidence or perjury,
Corrupt Practice,
Mishandling of property,
Breach of Code A PACE,
Breach of Code B PACE,
Breach of Code C PACE,
Breach of Code D PACE,
Breach of Code E PACE,
Lack of fairness or impartiality,
Multiple or unspecified breach of PACE,
Other neglect or failure of duty,
Other irregularity in procedure,
Incivility, impoliteness or intolerance,
Traffic irregularity,
Other,
Improper disclosure of information,

With these in mind please supply me with whatever information would help me to better understand which types of subject for complaint (in particular clarifying which of those above) would be appropriate for handling under Local Resolution and without referral to the IPCC (which I understand has the same qualification criteria).

Please note that a repeat of the above statement regarding criminal and misconduct will not help me in this respect as this means little to me, however clarification of which of the above fall into potential local resolution outcomes would be a great assistance.

Yours faithfully,

Ian Howgate

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Claudia Rego,

1 Attachment

Dear Mr Howgate,

Please find attached a response to your request for information.

Kind Regards,

Claudia Rego
Independent Police Complaints Commission (ipcc)
www.ipcc.gov.uk<http://www.ipcc.gov.uk/>
IPCC Statutory Guidance on the handling of police complaints<http://www.ipcc.gov.uk/page/statutory-gu...>

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fFaudwAtch UK (Account suspended) left an annotation ()

Thank you for obtaining this information:

"I can confirm that the IPCC holds information relating to your request. The IPCC has published our Statutory Guidance and Section 5 contains detail about what can be addressed through Local Resolution. In addition, the IPCC also publishes Focus, which looks at particular areas of the complaints system in depth, using case studies. Issue 3 is dedicated to Local Resolution and issue 4 looks at decision making at the beginning of a complaint, including whether it is suitable for Local Resolution.

The referral criteria can be found in Section 8 of the Statutory Guidance – they do not align with suitability for Local Resolution.

You can locate the Statutory Guidance and Focus online at the following websites:

http://www.ipcc.gov.uk/page/statutory-gu...

http://www.ipcc.gov.uk/page/focus "

Dear Claudia Rego,

Thank you for the attached. This is helpful, however I believe that the IPCC holds further information either in the detailed processes and procedures on decision making, the training material or the heads of your decision makers which would be easy to provide and would go a lot further towards answering my question.

To help you understand what I am looking for please consider what you would do if a member of the public complained that their complaint had been categorised in any of the areas I have listed and yet had been handled under local resolution rather than referred to or retained by PSD. Please respond by providing an answer as to whether the category of complaint allocated by the local police force would a) immediately specify that this complaint had been misdirected, b) the complaint was plainly suitable for local resolution or c) it was unclear without further information whether the complaint was suitable for local resolution.

Obviously unless the IPCC hold information to allow them to make decisions of this nature they would not be able to do their jobs.

Many thanks

Ian Howgate

!FOI Requests,

1 Attachment

Dear Mr Howgate,

Thank you for your email regarding your new request for information.

Please find the attached response from David Knight.

Yours sincerely,

Adam Lillis
Freedom Of Information and Data Protection Officer
Directorate of Resources
Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC)
90 High Holborn
London WC1V 6BH
E-mail: [email address]
www.ipcc.gov.uk

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fFaudwAtch UK (Account suspended) left an annotation ()

I marked the request as being partially successful in that it appeared some helpful information was disclosed.