Racist Behaviour - 234/21

Date Responded 08 April 2021

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:

Please can you provide a breakdown for the number of police officers that have been investigated, reprimanded or sacked for racist behaviour in each calendar year from 2015 to 2020.

Can you also provide details of the incidents that led to disciplinary action taking place and the outcome of that action.

In Response:

Following receipt of your request, searches were conducted with the Professional Standards Department of Northumbria Police. I can confirm that the information you have requested is held by Northumbria Police.

I am able to disclose the located information to you as follows.

The information provided has been extracted a ‘live’ database and may be subject to the addition and deletion of complaints, complainants and subjects after the initial extraction of data used for the purposes of this request.

Data has been checked for allegations recorded between 01/01/2015 to 31/12/2020 for complaint and conduct matters relating to racist complaints or behaviour by Police Officers.

All allegations recorded under the allegation type “discriminatory behaviour” were checked as well as a key word search in the allegation summary field for the following the words ‘racism’, ‘racist’, ‘racial’, ‘race’, ‘ethnic’ and ‘discriminatory’.

Year	No of Cases	No of Officers	Disciplinary Action Taken	Management Action	No Action	Allegation Summary	Outcome	Case Status
2015	20	35	1	1	33	That the officer has racially abused a taxi driver, during a taxi journey.	Dismissed	Finalised
2016	20	28	0	1	27	N/A	N/A	Finalised
2017	19	33	0	0	33	N/A	N/A	Finalised
2018	17	22	1	0	21	When off duty, the Officer made racially offensive comments. The Officer was reported by their colleagues for this behaviour.	Dismissed	Finalised
2019	19	34	0	1	32	N/A	N/A	1 x Live
2020	20	21	0	0	15	N/A	N/A	6 x Live 3 x Review Period 2 x IOPC Review

Disclaimer

Due to the different methods of recording information across 43 forces, a specific response from one constabulary should not be seen as an indication of what information could be supplied (within cost) by another. Systems used for recording these figures are not generic, nor are the procedures used locally in capturing the data. For this reason responses between forces may differ, and should not be used for comparative purposes.

The information we have supplied to you is likely to contain intellectual property rights of Northumbria Police. Your use of the information must be strictly in accordance with the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 (as amended) or such other applicable legislation. In particular, you must not re-use this information for any commercial purpose.