FOI 401-24 Firearm Officers
Enquiry Reference: 401 - 24
I write in connection with regards to your Freedom of Information request. Below is your request and our response.
1) The total number (headcount) of firearms officers employed by the force as of:
- a) 31 March 2022
- b) 31 March 2023
We have looked at the content of your request and must advise you that we consider the Freedom of information Act 2000 Exemption 21 (Information Accessible by other means) is engaged in relation to this request this is a class based and absolute exemption, requiring no prejudice or public interest to be considered.
If you visit Home office police use of firearms statistics it will open a page with the all the current information the Home Office publish on this matter.
- c) 31 March 2024
- a) 66
2a) The number (headcount) of firearms officers who voluntarily surrendered their ticket/accreditation to carry firearms within the financial year 2022/23 but remained in service with the force.
- a) 5
2b) For each instance, please list the month it was surrendered, the reason and whether the individual has since returned to holding a ticket/accreditation.
- a) Please see below.
3a) The number (headcount) of firearms officers who voluntarily surrendered their ticket/accreditation to carry firearms within the financial year 2023/24 but remained in service with the force.
- a) Less than 5.
3b) For each instance, please list the month it was surrendered, the reason and whether the individual has since returned to holding a ticket/accreditation.
NB These numbers should include all firearms officers, whether or not they are operationally deployable.
If one firearms officer happened to volunteer their ticket more than once in a financial year, please count this as one for questions 2a and 3a but list the circumstances separately in questions 2b and 3b.
a)
Section 1 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 places two duties on public authorities. Unless exemptions apply, the first duty at Section 1(1) (a) is to confirm or deny whether the information specified in a request is held. The second duty at Section 1(1) (b) is to disclose information that has been confirmed as being held. Where exemptions are relied upon, Section 17 of the Freedom of Information Act requires that I provide the applicant with a notice which: a) states that fact b) specifies the exemption(s) in question and c) state (if that would not otherwise be apparent) why the exemption applies.
Cleveland can confirm we hold the information relevant to your request as the duty in Section 1(1) (a) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 does not apply, by virtue of the following exemptions:
Section 40(2) Personal Information
This should not be taken as conclusive evidence that any information that would meet your request exists or does not exist.
Section 40 is an absolute exemption, 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.
By way of explanation to you I would point out the following: Under Section 40(2) of The Freedom of Information Act, information is exempt information if it constitutes personal information of which the applicant is not the data subject. In order to be considered exempt personal information, the information must satisfy one of two conditions. It must either be information which would be exempt from disclosure to the data subject under the provisions of the Data Protection Act 2018, or disclosure of the information would contravene any of the Data Protection Principles or cause damage or distress to the data subject.
On this occasion the information requested is clearly personal information and would contravene the first principle of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) - lawfulness, fairness and transparency, what are the likely expectations of the data subjects, in that would they expect the Cleveland Police to release officers’ personal details to the world, since release of information under The Freedom of Information Act 2000, is release to the world at large and not just to the individual applicant and as such I believe to do so would amount to unfair processing and hence therefore is exempt.
Please note that all statistical data supplied in relation to Freedom of Information requests is a snapshot of data held at the time the request was received by the Freedom of Information office and is subject to constant change/updates.
The Cleveland Police response to your request is unique and it should be noted that Police Forces do not use generic systems or identical procedures to capture and record data therefore responses from Cleveland Police should not be used as a comparison with any other force response you receive.
If you are not satisfied with this response or any actions taken in dealing with your request, you have the right to request an independent internal review of your case under our review procedure. The APP College of Policing guidance states that a request for internal review should be made within 20 working days of the date on this response or 40 working days if extenuating circumstances to account for the delay can be evidenced.
Yours sincerely
Information Rights Decision Maker