Assaults involving Metropolitan Police officers 2022 and 2023
1. Confirm how many incidents involving the on duty use of force/assault by a Metropolitan Police officer were referred to the CPS between January 1 2022 and December 31 2022.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) does not hold the information as specified in your request.
Under Section 16 of the FOI Act we can provide data as ‘advice and assistance’. Please refer to the tables within ‘CPS FOI ref 11687’ (available below). Table 1 shows the number of pre-charge decisions completed where the suspect was flagged with the Police Complaints monitoring flag for the calendar year 2022. Since pre-charge decision and prosecution cases involving officers are routinely dealt with in CPS Areas, other than those where the force corresponds to the CPS Area, a manual review of case files will be required to identify if any related to Metropolitan police officers. The Police Complaints flag is applied to cases involving police officers, police staff, PCSOs etc. (please refer to the full definition within the Attachment) and to identify actual police officers would also require a manual review of CPS case files.
2. Confirm how many incidents involving the on duty use of force/assault by a Metropolitan Police officer were referred to the CPS between January 1 2023 to June 31 2023.
I refer to our response to question 1 but for the period January to June 2023.
3. In relation to the matters referred to in points 1 and 2, please confirm in how many cases it was authorised to bring criminal proceedings against a police officer in relation to an allegation of assault within those two time periods, specifically as follows:
a) grievous bodily harm
b) assault occasioning actual bodily harm
c) common assault
The data provided within Tables 1 and 2 has been filtered by the Pre-Charge Principal Offence Category of ‘Offences against the Person’. This category comprises a number of offences including grievous bodily harm, assault occasioning actual bodily harm and common assault. A manual review of cases would be required to identify separate offences within these categories.
4. In relation to the prosecutions referred to in point 3, please confirm how many officers were convicted of any allegation of assault and how many were acquitted, either in the Magistrates' Court or Crown Court.
The data in Table 2 provides the number of police complaints flagged prosecutions by outcome for the 18 month period requested. Again, this is national data split by the Principal Offence Category ‘Offences against the Person’, and a manual review would be required to identify the individual offence, whether the defendant was a police officer and the force they belonged to.
5. Please confirm, in relation to the cases brought before the criminal Courts outlined above, within the two time frames, on how many occasions the decision to bring proceedings was made within three months of the receipt of any Report from the IOPC or Metropolitan Police Service, by the CPS.
As per the comments above – a manual review of CPS case files would be required.
To provide the specific and detailed information you are seeking within questions one to five would require a manual review of the total number of decisions and completed prosecutions outcomes contained in Tables 1 and 2, equating to 318, which would engage the Section 12(1) cost exemption under the FOI Act.
Section 12(1) of the FOI Act means public authorities are not obliged to comply with a request for information if it estimates the cost of complying would exceed the appropriate limit. The appropriate limit for central government is set at £600. This means that the appropriate limit will be exceeded if it would require more than 24 hours work in determining whether the CPS holds the information, and locating, retrieving and extracting the information.
We believe that the cost of reviewing the 318 outcomes as identified above to retrieve the information within the scope of your request would exceed the appropriate limit. Consequently, we are not obliged to comply with your request.
Under Section 16 of the Freedom of Information Act we have an obligation to advise what, if any information may assist you with your request. It is possible that more complete records of referrals and prosecutions of police officers from the Metropolitan Police Force are held by that force so you may wish to contact the Metropolitan Police Force directly.