Dear Home Office,

I am writing to request information and/or documents held by you or stored in archives accessible to you regarding police actions in situations of public demonstration, assembly or protest. Specifically, under the Freedom of Information Act (2000), I am requesting the following:

For each question listed below, please provide information and/or documents relating to the activities of the police forces in situations of protest. We refer to “protest” as assemblies of people (including marches, demonstrations, rallies etc) in which the motive for the assembly, usually in a public place, is for the purposes of expressing themselves about issues of concern.

1. What legislation governs the use of equipment at the disposal of police forces in protest situations?

2. What types of equipment are police forces permitted to use in protest situations? (For example: batons, shields, water cannons, rubber bullets, etc.)

3. For all the equipment types available for use by police officers in situations of protest that are supplementary to normal police equipment, please provide me with data including:
a. The number of items in the possession of police forces for each equipment type;
b. The amount of times that such equipment types have been used in the last five years;

4. What guidance and training are police provided with on use of equipment for dealing with protest? Please send a copy or direct website link to any guidance documents regarding the use of force in such situations.

5. Has the police or government compiled any evaluation reports on the policing of protests in the past five years? If so, please send a copy of the evaluation documents or direct me to the direct on-line link.

I kindly request you to provide this information and/or these documents in electronic format if at all possible.

For responses including datasets (for example for question 2 above), I would be very grateful if you could send me the requested data in an Excel or other type of spreadsheet format.

If you should require any further information, or a clarification of any part of this request, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you.

Yours sincerely,

Morgane
Researcher, Human Rights
Access Info Europe