Police Officers caught either under the influence of drugs or in possession of drugs from January 2020 to October 2022
Freedom of information request reference no: 01.FOI.22.027455
I note you seek access to the following information:
1. I am looking to find out the number of police officers (of any rank) who were caught either under the influence of drugs or in possession of drugs.
2. Please also specify their ranks, where they were based and what drug(s).
I would like to see figures from the full calendar years of 2020, 2021 and as much of 2022 as possible.
Decision
I have today decided to disclose some of the requested information. Some data has been withheld as it is exempt from disclosure and therefore this response serves as a Refusal Notice under Section 17 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the Act) by virtue of the following exemptions:
Section 40(2)(a)(b)(3)(a)(i)(ii)(b) – Personal Information
Reason for decision
I have made the decision to disclose the number of police officers who were either under the influence of drugs or in possession of drugs as requested in your question 1 and information pertaining to officers rank, and the type of drug(s) as requested at your question 2, however, I am unable to provide any further information in relation to the specifics of where those officers were based within the MPS. Any further disclosure would be highly likely to identify an individual and release personal information into the public domain.
Section 40(2)(a)(b)(3)(a)(i)(ii)(b) – Personal Information - of the Act, which exempts personal information from disclosure has therefore been engaged.
Section 40(2)(3) is an absolute and class based exemption if to release the information would breach the third party’s data protection rights. In this case to release this personal information would not constitute fair processing of the data. As this exemption is class based I am not required to identify the harm in disclosure and in this instance I believe that the right to privacy outweighs any public interest in release.
Section 3 of the Data Protection Act 2018 confirms that information which relates to an identified or identifiable living individual is Personal Data. The Freedom of Information Act provides an exemption for Personal Data and this is known as the section 40 exemption.
Some of the information you have requested is considered by the MPS to be personal to the officers concerned. Where the request is seeking access to third party personal data the section 40(2) exemption may be engaged.
In order to apply the Section 40(2) exemption the disclosure of the requested information must satisfy either the first, second or third conditions as defined by subsections 3(A), 3(B) and 4(A) of the Data Protection Act 2018.
The first condition ensures that the exemption would apply in circumstances where the disclosure of the information would breach any of the Data Protection Act 2018 principles.
There are six Data Protection principles set out in the 2018 act and these can be found at section 34. In this instance I have decided that the disclosure of the Personal Data would be incompatible with the first Data Protection principle which states that the processing (in this case the disclosure) of the data must be both lawful and fair.
Disclosure
Q1 - I am looking to find out the number of police officers (of any rank) who were caught either under the influence of drugs or in possession of drugs.
Q2 - Please also specify their ranks, where they were based and what drug(s).
The data retrieved and presented in table 2 pertains to 16 units within the MPS. The names of each unit has been REDACTED under Sec 40 of the Act, for the reasons outlined above.