Review into handling of allegations involving police officers/staff from NPCC

Freedom of information request reference no: 01.FOI.22.026461

I note you seek access to the following information:

In October 2021 the NPCC asked police forces to conduct reviews into handling of reports of domestic abuse / exposure / other VAWG related allegations involving police officers and staff.

At the time NPCC Chair Martin Hewitt said: “We’ve commissioned a review of all of the incidents that relate to violence against women and girls, and issues around indecent exposure… any of those incidents by serving police officers and staff.”

It was said the work was to be coordinated by the NPCC - but that police forces would conduct the individual reviews internally.

Please disclose to me, under the Freedom of Information Act, any findings / data / reports / reviews by your police force in response to this request from the NPCC.

I appreciate that if names of any complainants (or details that would lead to them being identified) are included - they will need to be redacted. However, I would ask that information submitted to the NPCC is not summarized / abridged etc for the purposes of responding to this request.

The information I request might simply be a document/report that was submitted to the NPCC. However, if a limited and / or random sample of cases was submitted to the NPCC - I would ask that the full set of results / data / cases is disclosed (IF this is in a format that can be identified and retrieved within the time limit).

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 31(1)(a)(b)(2)(b) - Law Enforcement
Section 40(2)(3)&(4) – Personal Information

Reason for decision

I note that you are seeking disclosure of …”any findings / data / reports / reviews by the MPS in response to the request from the NPCC for police forces to conduct reviews into the handling of reports of domestic abuse / exposure / other VAWG related allegations involving police officers and staff”. And have further asked that “…if a limited and / or random sample of cases was submitted to the NPCC … that the full set of results / data / cases is disclosed.

Please be advised that the only data we hold is a spreadsheet comprising raw data in relation to individual cases which was sent to NPCC for their collation. This can not be disclosed in full, as you have requested, as it contains a significant amount of personal information, and information that would be prejudicial to investigations and any such disclosure would impact on law enforcement if released. Disclosure to this level of granularity would release sensitive personal information about individuals into the public domain, which would be intrusive and distressing and would breach the first Data Protection Act principle, and as such, would not be considered lawful.

Disclosure to this level of granularity would also identify specific investigations, which would, or would be likely to prejudice our ability to ascertain whether any person is responsible for any conduct which is improper, and our ability to prevent or detect crime and apprehend or prosecute offenders, which would impact on law enforcement. We we are therefore unable to disclose the full set of results as you have requested and have instead made the decision to abstract the data assessed as suitable for disclosure from the spreadsheet, and this has been aggregated and presented in separate tables to further minimise the risk of individuals and investigations being identified.

Section 31(1)(a)(b)(2)(b) - Law Enforcement - There is undoubtedly a call for openness and transparency with regard to reports of domestic abuse / exposure / other VAWG related allegations involving police officers and staff and this can be seen from the decision to publish outcomes of misconduct hearings following sentencing. This acts as a reassurance to members of the public that the police thoroughly investigate and deal with allegations of misconduct/gross misconduct, expeditiously and thoroughly. That being said this is only ever done when deemed safe to do so from a law enforcement perspective and if we were to release information about specific investigations in response to a FOIA request this could potentially compromise ongoing misconduct investigations which would most certainly prejudice our ability to prevent or detect crime, apprehend or prosecute offenders, and ascertain whether any person is responsible for any conduct which is improper, which would ultimately undermine the effective delivery of operational law enforcement.

Disclosure of the additional information you are seeking would identify specific cases which would impact on our ability to prevent or detect crime, apprehend or prosecute offenders and ascertain whether any person is responsible for any conduct which is improper.

I consider that the benefit that would result from releasing the additional information you are seeking does not outweigh the considerations favouring non-disclosure when this would most certainly prejudice our ability to prevent or detect crime, apprehend or prosecute offenders, and ascertain whether any person is responsible for any conduct which is improper, which would ultimately undermine the effective delivery of operational law enforcement.

Section 40(2)(3)&(4) - Personal Information - The Freedom of Information Act provides an exemption for personal data and this is known as the Section 40 exemption. The information sought under your FOIA request includes low level data that could identify individuals if released, and the details of each case, which we consider to be the personal data of the individuals identifiable within the dataset, both the victims and 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 specified within Article 5(1) of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). In this instance I have decided that the disclosure of the Personal Data would be incompatible with the first Data Protection principle which requires that personal data shall be:

‘processed lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner in relation to the data subject (‘lawfulness, fairness and transparency’);

Under the Data Protection Act 2018, the disclosure of personal data is considered to be lawful if:

a. There is a legitimate interest in the disclosure of that personal data.
b. The disclosure of the personal data is necessary to meet that legitimate interest.
c. The disclosure would not cause unwarranted harm to the data subject.

Here, we need to balance the rights and freedoms of the individuals involved with any legitimate public interest in disclosure.

The MPS understands the arguments that can be made around the public interest and the desire to understand better how MPS employees conduct themselves, however, the requested data is personal to any individuals concerned.

It can be argued that the legitimate interest has been satisfied by the disclosure today of the overarching statistical figures. Disclosure of more details would be highly likely to lead to the identification of individuals and specific cases and would not be necessary or proportionate. Furthermore, the details of officers and/or police staff found guilty of gross misconduct are already made public in misconduct notices, as per our legal obligations, and those individuals would have no expectation that their details would be made public again in response to a FOIA request.

Finally, it is for the MPS to consider whether disclosure of the requested information would cause unwarranted harm to the data subjects, and it is extremely likely that such information, if disclosed, would be commented on and referred to publicly by the media – which would be distressing for all concerned parties and would have a lasting impact upon them. Furthermore, MPS privacy notices indicate that personal data is collected and used for policing purposes and will not further processed in a manner that is incompatible with those purposes.

With this in mind, the data subjects in the circumstances of your request would have a legitimate expectation that this personal data would not be used for non-policing purposes.

Disclosure of the details of these cases would be unlawful and would therefore contravene the first data protection principle.

I have therefore applied the exemption provided under Section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act to this information as the first condition, defined in subsection 3(A)(a) of Section 40 has been satisfied. This therefore becomes an absolute exemption, and I am not required to provide you with a public interest test.

Disclosure

Please find below information relevant to your request.