Nature of corrupt practice and officers charged of criminal offence from March 2017 to February 2022

Freedom of information request reference no: 01.FOI.22.026275

I note you seek access to the following information:

For the cases recorded as corrupt practice in the list below, from 01/FOI/22/023740, please provide a spreadsheet detailing in each case, the nature of the corrupt practice, whether the officer was charged with a criminal offence, and if so whether they were convicted, at what court, and what their name is.

Case Recorded Type or Breach Rank Gender Meeting Hearing Date Misconduct Outcome BCU
07/12/16 Corrupt practice Constable Male 2/7/2018 Written Warning East Area
09/03/18 Corrupt practice Constable Female 10/4/2021 Would Have Been Dismissed East Area
22/06/18 Corrupt practice Constable Male 9/17/2019 Would Have Been Dismissed North East
22/09/16 Corrupt practice Constable Male 11/14/2019 Pending East Area
05/01/17 Corrupt practice Constable Female 12/1/2017 Pending North East
09/12/16 Corrupt practice Constable Female 11/29/2018 Final Written Warning East Area
23/05/17 Corrupt practice Constable Male 11/14/2018 Dismissal Without Notice North East
27/08/15 Corrupt practice Constable Male 04/19/2018 Dismissal Without Notice North East

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)(g)(2)(b) – Law Enforcement
Section 40(2)(3A)(a) – Personal Information

Reason for decision

Application of Section 40(2)(3) is subject to whether the disclosure of the information requested would lead to identifying living individuals linked to the misconduct and place information pertaining to them into the public domain. This constitutes personal data which would, if released, be in breach of the rights provided by the Data Protection Act 2018 and General Data Protection Regulations.

Section 40(2)(3A)(a) – 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 Freedom of Information request relates to specific individuals that were involved in specific cases. We consider this to be the Personal Data of those individuals.

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 fully understands that there is a strong public interest around officer discipline related matters, due to the public facing nature of their role and the need for them to be trustworthy and law abiding.

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

Disclosure in the circumstances of your request 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.

With regard to Section 31(2)(3), this exemption pertains to information held ‘for the purpose of ascertaining whether any person is responsible for any conduct which is improper’ during an investigation. Therefore, section 31 is engaged, and it is our opinion that the exemption should be maintained as the information that you are requesting was captured for the purpose of ascertaining the outcome of the hearing. The MPS should be entitled to conduct our investigations, both criminal and disciplinary, freely without having to disclose all related details under the Act.

Section 31(1)(g)(2)(b) – Law Enforcement - To disclose specific information relating to these particular cases, would be of no tangible benefit to the public at large.
I consider that the benefit that would result from the information being disclosed does not outweigh the considerations favouring non-disclosure. Although the matter is of interest to the public, this incident has now been dealt with. Therefore, there is less public interest in making it available to the wider public and press at this time.

Disclosure

Please find attached some information in relation to your request subject to the exemptions mentioned above.