Police call-outs to children's hospitals in London
Freedom of information request reference no: 01.FOI.22.026128
I note you seek access to the following information:
For every year for the past 5 years (calendar year or tax year, I don't mind), please can you give me a list of incidents at Evelina London Children's Hospital and Great Ormond Street Hospital attended by officers, including
a) the date of the incident
b) the age of the patient involved
c) the alleged offence(s) committed and/or any other details of call (eg police needed to help restrain suicidal 15 year old)
d) whether any action was taken (caution/charge etc)”
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)(3A)(a) – Personal Information
Reason for decision
Data disclosed in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act is disclosed to the world, and not just to the individual requesting the information. This is best demonstrated by the FOI disclosures on the Disclosure Log section of the MPS website.
You have requested specific record level data. This level of information is not suitable for public consumption. Should the MPS publish crime data at the level requested, it would be at a level that would make the identification of individuals extremely possible. To produce and publish crime related information at a level that would identify the involved parties would not be lawful, fair or in line with our processing commitments. Thus, disclosure of the information at record level is exempt in accordance with section 40(2)(3A)(a) of the Act.
Section 40(2)(3A)(a) – Personal Information - 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.
The information sought under your Freedom of Information request is at such a level that, if disclosed, would provide enough detail (exact location, date, victim’s age and offence for example) to identify the individuals involved – particularly victims.
When looking at disclosing the requested information, I have considered various pieces of guidance, including the ICO’s guidance titled ‘Crime mapping and geo-spatial crime data: privacy and transparency’, which examines a number of issues relating to the disclosure of crime data.
This guidance suggests that the following factors are relevant in relation to ensuring that the publication of crime maps (and essentially therefore low level, potentially identifying personal crime data) comply with the Data Protection Act 2018:
• The granularity of the crime-map or data,
• The regularity of data uploads,
• The sensitivity of the crime,
• The information recorded on the map,
• The availability of other sources of information and,
• The effect on victims and others.
As the information you have requested is not directly relating to the publication of crime maps, I have, when looking at the data, considered the following, broadly equivalent factors when making my decision:
• The area covered by the request
• The time intervals
• Sensitivity of the crime
• Additional information
• The availability of other sources of information
You are requesting crime data broken down to specific locations, during specific dates, for all crime types, and identifying information about the victims and suspects (ages and whether anyone was proceeded against).
It is often believed that such information, even though detailed, is unlikely to allow anyone to actually identify those involved as the data is ‘too abstract’ and ‘there would be no way of knowing who these people were unless you were a witness to the crime’ for example. However, when considering identifiability, we have to assume that we are not looking just at the means reasonably likely to be used by the ordinary man in the street, but also the means that are likely to be used by a determined person (or a ‘motivated intruder’) with a particular reason to want to identify individuals. Examples would include investigative journalists, estranged partners, stalkers, to name but a few.
If this level of data was to be disclosed, it could be pieced together with information already known by individuals or already in the public domain in order to identify the individuals involved. For example, individuals may be partially aware of certain details of an alleged crime through word of mouth, witnessing an incident or police presence. To disclose certain details in relation to the nature of an incident may allow such individuals to ascertain or infer that a specific allegation or incident relates to a particular individual. This would be unfair to persons that were victims of a crime and/or to those suspected of an offence.
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.
It is pertinent to note here that the public interest is not what interests the public but what will be of greater good, if released, to the community as a whole.
In relation to balancing the rights of data subjects and the legitimate interests in disclosure the Information Commissioner’s guidance states:
‘Public authorities should note that this is not the same as the public interest test for
qualified exemptions and there is no assumption of disclosure’.
Therefore, to justify disclosing personal data, it would be necessary to establish a substantial public interest that would outweigh the privacy rights of the data subjects.
The MPS recognises that there may be a legitimate public interest in disclosing the information requested. A legitimate interest is inherent in the disclosure of information upon request under the Freedom of Information Act given the associated benefit of enhancing the transparency and accountability of public authorities.
Disclosure of the information requested may also help increase public awareness of crime occurring in the health setting. This may increase public participation and debate in relation to local crime and empower members of the public to hold public authorities to account and make informed choices to improve security and safety at hospitals.
It is possible to meet the public interest identified above without disclosing the information in the requested format.
By producing the data in the way we have today (for example, by not breaking it down into dates, and not allowing the different pieces of information to be cross referenced to one another), we have provided information in an anonymised way.
In addition, there are already established procedures in place for disclosing information when to do so would enable individuals to take preventative steps to avoid being the victim of crime and to assist in the apprehension of offenders. For example, the MPS regularly issue crime prevention advice to victims of crime and the public at large. This may be through crime prevention leaflets, advice and guidance on the MPS Internet site or via news media.
The MPS also issues press releases and appeals for information where to do so would aid an investigation.
Local crime data is also regularly published on the Internet via various official sources, for example the MPS crime mapping website or the UK crime mapping sites. These sites publish crime data that is low level, but anonymised:
https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/recorded_crime_summary
The MPS stats and data pages specifically provide crime data at sub-ward/SNT level. Published data does not go lower than a month. The data can also be exported to Excel which typically reveals more data:
MPS stats and data pages -Crime Data Dashboard
Finally, it is for the MPS to consider whether disclosure of the requested information would cause unwarranted harm to the data subjects.
Disclosure of the information requested may cause unwarranted harm to the interests of individuals. This is due to the fact that the details of involvement with the police relates to the private lives of individuals. Therefore, they would not expect this information to be placed under public scrutiny.
I have also considered whether it would be reasonable for members of the public to expect details of their involvement with the police to be disclosed.
The purposes for which the MPS can process personal data are outlined in our privacy notices. These privacy notices indicate that personal data is collected and used for policing purposes only and will not further processed in a manner that is incompatible with those purposes.
https://www.met.police.uk/privacy-notice/
https://www.met.police.uk/SysSiteAssets/foi-media/metropolitan-police/policies/special-category-and-criminal-convictions-personal-data-policy.pdf
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.
Therefore, it would be reasonable for an individual to expect any information about them held by the MPS to only be used to support a policing purpose. This supports the argument that disclosure of the information requested would be unlawful and unfair to individuals.
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
The located information has been produced in a way to avoid the identification of any individuals involved in the incidents. No further breakdown can be provided.
Data:
During this period, there were 3 calls to Great Ormond Street, which were classified as ‘concern for safety’, ‘domestic incident’ and ‘violence against the person’.
During this period, there were 5 calls to the Evelina London Children’s Hospital, which were classified either as a ‘contact record’, ‘police generated resource activity’ or ‘violence against the person’.
During this period, there were 0 offences recorded with a location of Great Ormond Street.
During this period, there were 5 offences recorded with the location of the Evelina London Children’s Hospital. These were recorded as either ‘common assault and battery’, ‘racially or religiously aggravated harassment or stalking with fear of violence’, ‘theft if not classified elsewhere’, or ‘theft of a pedal cycle’.
There were outcomes for all 5 of these offences – they were classified as either ‘investigation complete, no suspect identified’ or ‘suspect identified, victim supports, evidential difficulties’.
For these offences, victims were aged as follows:
20-29 - 1
30-39 - 1
40 and over - 3
No further details can be provided in relation to these calls and offences.
Notes:
The date range for this data was 01/01/2017 to 31/07/2022.
The data represents CAD calls to Great Ormond Street Hospital and Evelina London Children’s Hospital. The classification type is that which was assigned to the calls when first received.
Offences from these two locations were also returned, where found.
In addition, these records relate to the locations as recorded and they could have occurred inside or around that location.