FOI 820/24 Discrimination and Hate Crime
Dear Sir/Madam
Enquiry Reference: 820 - 24
I write in connection with regards to your Freedom of Information request. Below is your clarified request and our response.
You have stated ''Between 2010 and 2024 How many officers and members of the public reported or complained of discrimination/hate crime to your force? If an officer has had an allegation of discrimination against them by a member of the public this is considered ‘misconduct’. Is this the information you require''
MY RESPONSE: Example - Between 2010 - 2024, 150045 members of the public rung us and reported hate crime, we have 3000 officers against whom their colleagues or senior officers reported (internal discrimination complaint process). You don't have to specify but say it in general terms. It can also be non-crime reports like (CAD) and etc. You don't have to be dead accurate. An estimation will do it for me.
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 some of this request. This is a class based and absolute exemption, requiring no prejudice or public interest to be considered.
Hate crime statistics are available on the Home Office website, gov.uk under Police and crime outcomes open data tables. The link is below however you can find these using an open-source search using the above information.
Police recorded crime and outcomes open data tables - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
You have stated ''How many people used social media to steer or cause riots between July and August 2024? (Example On Facebook 15000 thousand people posted to go on a riot and encouraged others to break things or commit crime. on twitter 10000 and so forth).
Section 1 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) 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 Sec 1(1) (b) is to disclose information that has been confirmed as being held. Where exemptions are relied upon s17 of FOIA requires that we provide the applicant with a notice which: a) states that fact b) specifies the exemption(s) in question and c) states (if that would not otherwise be apparent) why the exemption applies.
Having made enquiries within the Force we do not have a crime code for the above question and due to the nature of our recording systems the information requested, if held, is not in an easily retrievable format. Our information retrieval process generally relies on a computer ran report which captures any information recorded upon the surface of a record. Where relevant information is held deeper in a record a manual assessment is usually required to retrieve that information. In this instance ''How many people used social media to steer or cause riots between July and August 2024” is not case management system level therefore to determine such detail would require a manual search through all the crimes and this would take in excess of the appropriate time stipulated by the Secretary for Constitutional Affairs, Lord Falconer on the 18th Of October 2004, that is, eighteen hours. This falls under the exemption of 'Compliance exceeding the appropriate limit' covered by Section 12 (1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and as such this work could not be undertaken. If one part of the request engages a Section 12 response, the whole request will engage a Section 12 response. The reason being is due to the fact that locating, retrieving and extracting any further information would only add to the already exceeded time obligations.
Therefore, please treat this as a refusal notice under S17 of the Freedom of information Act.
In accordance with Section 16 of the Act we have a duty to provide advice and assistance however on this occasion we cannot offer any suggestion on how you could refine this request.
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 Freedom of Information Code of Practice (see below link) 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. Public authorities are not obliged to accept internal reviews after this date.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/freedom-of-information-code-of-practice
Yours sincerely
Information Rights Decision Maker