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Data relating to Section 127 Communications Act 2003 from August 2021 to July 2023

Freedom of information request reference no: 01.FOI.23.032146

I note you seek access to the following information:

I would like to request information about the Communications Act 2003 within the Met Police.

I am seeing lots of news feeds recently about Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 being used which I'm not used to seeing prior to the last few years. I'm noticing more of the news feeds for this act is aimed at police officers in my opinion, where as I used to see the malicious communications act being used for members of the public.

Can you please inform me of the following:

1) Statistically over the last 2 year how many members of the public v how many police officers has been
A) arrested and
B) charged with the offence under Section 127 Communications Act 2003 only.

2) Does the statistics show the percentage of messages to be either false, grossly offensive or indecent for the charge to occur.

Decision

I have today decided to disclose the located information to you in full.

Please find below information pursuant to your request above.

IMPORTANT: Please ensure the notes page is read in conjunction with the data so it is interpreted correctly.

Please also note that it has only been possible to include arrests recorded against the specified Criminal Justice System (CJS) codes for data sourced from our system CONNECT. Some arrests will not have a CJS code allocated to them and will only be recorded against a Reason for Arrest (RFA). RFAs can be used for detainees on bail or who have received a disposal of ‘no further action’ or ‘released under investigation’.

For this particular request, there is not a specific RFA title that can be searched for. There is an RFA for ‘Malicious Communications’ but it is not possible to ascertain if this relates to offences under Sec 127 of the Communications Act 2003 or the Malicious Communications Act 1988. As there are 795 custody records currently including this RFA, it is not possible to read them all to determine if the offences might fall within the parameters of the FOI request - as to do so would be a cost refusal.