Assaults - 1178/18

Date Responded 23 November 2018

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 provide the total number of officers currently employed by the force.
Please provide the most recent data for 2018 as to how many times have police officers been physically assaulted while on duty

In Response:

As the information you have requested is accessible by other means I have not provided you with a copy of the information and will rely on Section 21 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. You should therefore consider this a refusal for your request.

I have provided an explanation to this exemption below.

Section 21 (1) - Information accessible by other means

Information which is reasonably accessible to the applicant is exempt information.

Establishment figures can be found on the Northumbria Police website under the ‘Structure of Northumbria Police’ These figures are updated quarterly.

Injury Type	2018
Abrasion	11
Bite	13
Broken bone	5
Broken tooth	1
Bruising	27
Burn/scald
Discomfort	29
Eye irritation	1
Laceration	10
Puncture
Respiratory irritation	2
Scratch	14
Skin irritation	2
Sprain	12
Strain	11
Swelling	15
Whiplash	1
Type not recorded	37
Grand Total	191

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.