Number of complaints against States of Jersey Police (FOI)

Request

Please provide details of the number of complaints received against the States of Jersey Police since 2016, (number of formal and informal by year).

In addition, the number which resulted in no action being taken (by year/formal/informal) and for those for which action was taken the split by severity assessment (performance, misconduct, gross misconduct and criminal) and the result and outcome (by year/formal/informal).

For the period in question, please also provide an anonymised cumulative histogram of number of complaints received by officer - x-axis number of complains, y-axis number of officers (e.g. 35 officers received no complaints, 5 officers received 2 complaints, 3 officers 10 complaints, 1 officer received 30 complaints……..).

Also can a similar histogram be produced for each of the results and outcomes as described above.

Response

To provide a breakdown between formal and informal complaints, between those where no action was taken and action was taken, as well as assessing a severity assessment, would require a manual interrogation of each record. It has been estimated that, on average, four minutes will be required to examine each one, which would equate to around 25 hours of work. This would exceed the 12 ½ hours maximum time limit as provided by Article 16(1) of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011, and these sections of the request are declined. 

Further, the Freedom of Information Law does not require a Scheduled Public Authority to manipulate data into new data sets, therefore no histograms will be created for the purpose of this request. 

A previous FOI response, which is publicly available, provides information about complaints supervised by the Jersey Police Complaints Authority (JPCA) although it should be noted that not all complaints are supervised by the JPCA. All public complaints where the complaint cannot be resolved informally are referred to the JPCA. The Chief Officer may also refer any matter to the JPCA if it appears to them that a member of the Force may have committed a criminal offence or an offence against discipline, and that they are not subject of a public complaint, if it appears to the Chief Officer that the matter ought to be referred by reason of its gravity or of exceptional circumstances. 

Criminal investigations and complaints against serving police officers (FOI)

The JPCA supervise all complaints where there is an allegation that the conduct of a member of the Force has resulted in death or serious injury of any other person. 

Please also note a new link to the Annual report for 2020:

Jersey Police Complaints Authority Annual Report 2020 (pdf) 

The Annual Report for 2021 is available in the following link:

Jersey Police Complaints Authority Annual Report 2021 (pdf) 

Articles applied

Article 16 - A scheduled public authority may refuse to supply information if cost excessive.

(1) A scheduled public authority that has been requested to supply information may refuse to supply the information if it estimates that the cost of doing so would exceed an amount determined in the manner prescribed by Regulations. 

(2) Despite paragraph (1), a scheduled public authority may still supply the information requested on payment to it of a fee determined by the authority in the manner prescribed by Regulations for the purposes of this Article.

(3) Regulations may provide that, in such circumstances as the Regulations prescribe, if two or more requests for information are made to a scheduled public authority –

(a) by one person; or

(b) by different persons who appear to the scheduled public authority to be acting in concert or in pursuance of a campaign, the estimated cost of complying with any of the requests is to be taken to be the estimated total cost of complying with all of them.