Provision of information held by Northumbria Police made under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the 'Act')
As you may be aware the purpose of the Act is to allow a general right of access to information held at the time of a request, by a Public Authority (including the Police), subject to certain limitations and exemptions.
You asked:
Using the definition of corruption in line with the National Police Counter Corruption Advisory Group ( NPCCAG Definition ( see in bold)
A law enforcement official commits an unlawful act or deliberately fails to fulfil their role arising out of an abuse of their position, for personal or perceived organisational advantage having the potential to affect a member of the public"
1. Please state the number of cases of alleged police corruption that your force has investigated internally or referred to the IOPC between Jan 1st 2016 and August 14th 2020.
Please provide the information in calendar years and broken down month by month in each of those calendar years
2. For each case, please provide the number of police officers involved and list the rank of each officer.
Rank No.
Inspector or above
Sergeant
Constable
Total no. of individuals
3. Please provide the outcome of each investigation, including the effect on the officer's employment and what disciplinary or prosecutorial action took place. NB: Ongoing cases can be marked as "unresolved" or "ongoing".
Outcome No.
Dismissed
Final Written Warning
Written Warning
Management Advice
Management Action
Resigned/Retired
No Action
Total no. of outcomes
5. Please provide details of the alleged misconduct or criminal behaviour involving corruption.
Category of allegation No.
Abuse of Authority
Controlled drug use and supply
Disclosure of Information
Inappropriate Association
Misuse of Force systems
Other (e.g. dishonesty)
Perverting the Course of justice
Sexual Misconduct
Theft and Fraud
Total
I would like a summary of the allegation for the first case in each month in each calendar year ( if any)
In Response:
We have now had the opportunity to fully consider your request and I provide a response for your attention.
Information Commissioners Office (ICO) guidelines state that:
A public authority must confirm or deny whether it holds the information requested unless the cost of this alone would exceed the appropriate limit.
I can neither confirm nor deny that the information you require is held by Northumbria Police as to actually determine if it is held would exceed the permitted 18 hours therefore Section 12(2) of the Freedom of Information Act would apply. This section does not oblige a public authority to comply with a request for information if the authority estimated that the cost of complying with the request would exceed the appropriate limit of 18 hours, equating to £450.00.
You should consider this to be a refusal notice under Section 17 of the Act for your request.
I have set out the reasons for this below.
There are no facilities on our recording systems that would allow searches to be made to establish a response to your request within the permitted time constraints. A manual review of approximately 1,000 cases would need to be conducted, to ascertain which met the National Police Counter Corruption Advisory Group definition as specified in your request. This task cannot be achieved within the permitted 18 hours as we have estimated that to extract this information would take 100 hours, therefore Section 12(1) of the Freedom of Information Act is therefore applicable.
You should note however that had Section 12 not been appropriate, other exemptions would have be considered and applied as relevant.
When applying Section 12 exemption our duty to assist under Section 16 of the Act would normally entail that we contact you to determine whether it is possible to refine the scope of your request to bring it within the cost limits. However, from the information we have outlined above I see no reasonable way in which we can do so.
As per our acknowledgement there was no point 4 in your submission.
