Taser Use & Complaints - 1699/21

Date Responded 30 December 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:

  1.  How many times was Taser used (APP definition of ‘use’; drawn, aimed, red-dot, arced, drive stun or discharge) by Northumbria Police officers between 0001 hours on 1st January 2020 and 2359 hours on 31st December 2020?
  2.  How many times was Taser used (APP definition of ‘use’; drawn, aimed, red-dot, arced, drive stun or discharge) between 0200 hours and 0600 hours, by Northumbria Police officers, between 0001 hours on 1st January 2020 and 2359 hours on 31st December 2020?
  3.  How many complaints against police were upheld, relating to the use of Taser by Northumbria Police officers between 0001 hours on 1st January 2020 and 2359 hours on 31st December 2020?
  4.  How many complaints against police were upheld, relating to the use of Taser by Northumbria Police officers, between 0001 hours on 1st January 2020 and 2359 hours on 31st December 2020, whereby the incident or Taser use occurred between 0200 hours and 0600 hours?
  5.  How many times was Taser used (APP definition of ‘use’; drawn, aimed, red-dot, arced, drive stun or discharge) by Northumbria Police officers between 0001 hours on 1st January 2019 and 2359 hours on 31st December 2019?
  6.  How many times was Taser used (APP definition of ‘use’; drawn, aimed, red-dot, arced, drive stun or discharge) between 0200 hours and 0600 hours, by Northumbria Police officers, between 0001 hours on 1st January 2019 and 2359 hours on 31st December 2019?
  7.  How many complaints against police were upheld, relating to the use of Taser by Northumbria Police officers between 0001 hours on 1st January 2019 and 2359 hours on 31st December 2019?
  8.  How many complaints against police were upheld, relating to the use of Taser by Northumbria Police officers, between 0001 hours on 1st January 2019 and 2359 hours on 31st December 2019, whereby the incident or Taser use occurred between 0200 hours and 0600 hours?
  9.  How many times was Taser used (APP definition of ‘use’; drawn, aimed, red-dot, arced, drive stun or discharge) by Northumbria Police officers between 0001 hours on 1st January 2018 and 2359 hours on 31st December 2018?
  10.  How many times was Taser used (APP definition of ‘use’; drawn, aimed, red-dot, arced, drive stun or discharge) between 0200 hours and 0600 hours, by Northumbria Police officers, between 0001 hours on 1st January 2018 and 2359 hours on 31st December 2018?
  11.  How many complaints against police were upheld, relating to the use of Taser by Northumbria Police officers between 0001 hours on 1st January 2018 and 2359 hours on 31st December 2018?
  12.  How many complaints against police were upheld, relating to the use of Taser by Northumbria Police officers, between 0001 hours on 1st January 2018 and 2359 hours on 31st December 2018, whereby the incident or Taser use occurred between 0200 hours and 0600 hours?
  13.  How many times was Taser used (APP definition of ‘use’; drawn, aimed, red-dot, arced, drive stun or discharge) by Northumbria Police officers between 0001 hours on 1st January 2017 and 2359 hours on 31st December 2017?
  14.  How many times was Taser used (APP definition of ‘use’; drawn, aimed, red-dot, arced, drive stun or discharge) between 0200 hours and 0600 hours, by Northumbria Police officers, between 0001 hours on 1st January 2017 and 2359 hours on 31st December 2017?
  15.  How many complaints against police were upheld, relating to the use of Taser by Northumbria Police officers between 0001 hours on 1st January 2017 and 2359 hours on 31st December 2017?
  16.  How many complaints against police were upheld, relating to the use of Taser by Northumbria Police officers, between 0001 hours on 1st January 2017 and 2359 hours on 31st December 2017, whereby the incident or Taser use occurred between 0200 hours and 0600 hours?
  17.  How many times was Taser used (APP definition of ‘use’; drawn, aimed, red-dot, arced, drive stun or discharge) by Northumbria Police officers between 0001 hours on 1st January 2016 and 2359 hours on 31st December 2016?
  18.  How many times was Taser used (APP definition of ‘use’; drawn, aimed, red-dot, arced, drive stun or discharge) between 0200 hours and 0600 hours, by Northumbria Police officers, between 0001 hours on 1st January 2016 and 2359 hours on 31st December 2016?
  19.  How many complaints against police were upheld, relating to the use of Taser by Northumbria Police officers between 0001 hours on 1st January 2016 and 2359 hours on 31st December 2016?
  20.  How many complaints against police were upheld, relating to the use of Taser by Northumbria Police officers, between 0001 hours on 1st January 2016 and 2359 hours on 31st December 2016, whereby the incident or Taser use occurred between 0200 hours and 0600 hours?
  21.  How many times was Taser used (APP definition of ‘use’; drawn, aimed, red-dot, arced, drive stun or discharge) by Northumbria Police officers between 0001 hours on 1st January 2015 and 2359 hours on 31st December 2015?
  22.  How many times was Taser used (APP definition of ‘use’; drawn, aimed, red-dot, arced, drive stun or discharge) between 0200 hours and 0600 hours, by Northumbria Police officers, between 0001 hours on 1st January 2015 and 2359 hours on 31st December 2015?
  23.  How many complaints against police were upheld, relating to the use of Taser by Northumbria Police officers between 0001 hours on 1st January 2015 and 2359 hours on 31st December 2015?
  24.  How many complaints against police were upheld, relating to the use of Taser by Northumbria Police officers, between 0001 hours on 1st January 2015 and 2359 hours on 31st December 2015, whereby the incident or Taser use occurred between 0200 hours and 0600 hours?

In Response:

Following receipt of your request, searches were conducted with both the Operations and Professional Standards Departments of Northumbria Police.  I can confirm that the information you have requested is held by Northumbria Police, however cannot be disclosed for the following reasons.

 

To provide information which meets the criteria of your request at each point where you ask “How many times….”, would entail a member of staff manually searching over 530 records alone for years 2015 – May 2018.  Even at a conservative estimate of 30 minutes per record, which we have considered as reasonable, we have estimated that to extract this information would take over 265 hours, therefore Section 12(1) 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.  Additional time would then be required to research your points which ask “How many complaints …..”, which would entail searching approximately 180 upheld complaints to ascertain and extract information relevant to your request – again we estimate this part alone to exceed the 18 hour threshold.

 

You should consider this to be a refusal notice under Section 17 of the Act for your request.

 

As part of your request would exceed the prescribed limit, as defined by the Act, there is no requirement for Northumbria Police to provide a response to the remaining parts of your request.  However, in order to provide you with some assistance, under Section 16 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, an initial assessment of the information that may be provided within the time constraints would be the questions asked above in regards to “How many times…..” (questions 1, 2, 5, 6, 9, 10, 13, 14, 17, 18, 21 and 22) only from 2019 onwards without the time ranges.

 

If this would be useful, you may wish to refine and resubmit your request accordingly.

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.

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