Police staff reported for social media activity

Freedom of information request reference no: 01.FOI.23.029010

I note you seek access to the following information:

Could I please have the information as a year on year breakdown.

1) The number of police staff reported for social media activity/ had complaints made against social media activity since March 2018, to now (01/03/2023), including their job title and rank and year-on-year comparative figures.

2) The breakdown of the nature of the complaint, the social media used (e.g. Facebook/Twitter) and whether it was made by an internal member of staff or a member of the public from March 2018 to now (01/03/2023).

3) How many faced subsequent proceedings, and what were these proceedings (investigation, suspension, expulsion, etc.)?

CLARIFICATION - 25/03/2023
As police officers - we mean all police employees and police officers.

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)(3) - Personal Information

Reason for decision

S40 are absolute exemptions which means that the legislators have identified that harm would be caused by any release. In addition there is no requirement to consider the public interest test.

The requested records contain personal data that I consider to be exempt under the Act. This relates to the parts of your request detailed below which asks for -

Job title and rank

The public release of the detail of each allegation of police officers and police staff that have been investigated would, alongside a breakdown of the year of each allegation, job title, rank, complaint type and the outcome of each allegation, be likely to lead to identification. Identification would occur as those internal/external to the MPS that have some awareness of each allegation, would be able to identify each employee and/or the personal details of the accuser(s).

In addition, I have displayed a specific rank as ‘Other’. Disclosure of the rank is likely to identify an individual as our searches provided a low count as one (1). I have also decided not to provide the job titles, again, to avoid identification of individuals.

Disclosure

Please find attached spreadsheet, which the rank has been presented in uncorrelated tables to ensure that is no harm caused to disclosure.

Please also note that the report uses data from the 1 January 2018 to the 28 February 2023 complete month and not up to 01/03/2023 as requested.