SoJP assistance to Ambulance services (FOI)

​Request

Please could I request answers to the following questions about the involvement of the States of Jersey Police (SOJP) in providing assistance to the States of Jersey Ambulance Service between January 2022 and October 2024. 

1. Please could I have a list of all incidents that involved police assistance during these years, including the date and a very brief description of the nature of the incident (e.g. Disorderly Conduct / Breach of the Peace / Violence Against the Person) 

2. Please could I have some copies of examples provided to paramedics during training about when police back-up should or should not be requested.

3. Please could you confirm whether the Emergency Services Control Centre logs: A) Requests for police assistance made by paramedics. B) Instances where requests were made but police back-up was not sent. If these logs are maintained, please provide data for the period mentioned above.

Response

1.

The attached table shows incidents that ambulance staff have logged in the Datix system where Police assistance has been provided in relation to behaviour, harassment, violence or abuse.  

Attachment - Table.pdf​

Please note that:

• Police may have been in attendance routinely at many other incidents including road traffic accidents etc. however this is not classed as police assistance in the context of this question
• Due to small numbers, the specific date cannot be provided as it may lead to identification of either the perpetrator or the victim and so Article 25 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has been applied.
• Descriptors used are generic within the system and cover a range of incidents.

2.

Summoning for Police assistance would be part of the Maybo SAFER model for dynamic risk assessment where the evaluation of options identifies handover to the relevant person or agency as the safest option e.g. – handover to the Police. This is included in the Safer De-Escalation module. However, due to copywrite and licencing restrictions, specific materials from Maybo training cannot be shared as the Scheduled Authority holds the information on behalf of the Maybo company.  Therefore Article 3 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 applies.

​3.

The Emergency Services Control Centre records when Police are informed of an Ambulance call that may require their assistance. This is logged with a timestamp and Controllers record notes about the request. However, these notes are free text, and on review there are 1198 calls that would need to be manually read and classified. It has been estimated that to gather the requested data would exceed the 12.5 hours allowed for Freedom of Information responses in accordance with Regulation 2 (1) of the Freedom of Information (Costs) (Jersey) Regulations 2014. Therefore Article 16 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has been applied.

The table provided in response to Part 1 shows where police were called and attended for Behaviour / Harassment / Violence / Abuse incidents for that time period.

Articles Applied

Article 3 - Meaning of “information held by a public authority”

For the purposes of this Law, information is held by a public authority if –

(a)     it is held by the authority, otherwise than on behalf of another person; or

(b)     it is held by another person on behalf of the authority.

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. 

Article 25 - Personal information

(1) Information is absolutely exempt information if it constitutes personal data of which the applicant is the data subject as defined in the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2018.

(2) Information is absolutely exempt information if –

(a) it constitutes personal data of which the applicant is not the data subject as defined in the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2018; and

(b) its supply to a member of the public would contravene any of the data protection principles, as defined in that Law.

3)   In determining for the purposes of this Article whether the lawfulness principle in Article 8(1)(a) of the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2018 would be contravened by the disclosure of information, paragraph 5(1) of Schedule 2 to that Law (legitimate interests) is to be read as if sub-paragraph (b) (which disapplies the provision where the controller is a public authority) were omitted.