Police forces are notoriously bad at responding to subject access requests (those are requests for your own personal data) as well as requests for data overall from the force, especially if the request for access is made by the public.
The Information Commissioner’s Office has recently published a report (link seen below) outlining just what an absolute catastrophe police responses to these requests are.
As ever with such a report the real eye-opener are the recommendations made by ICO. In this instance these are nine points which show how UK police forces are failing to deal with data access requests in anything like an efficient and professional way. Often this is because the purpose of data access legislation clashes with police’s wish to keep information regarding errors in procedure and process wholly secret.
Title page of ICO’s report.
This report will cause consternation in particular at failing Humberside Police, a force subject to many eye-watering fines from ICO in the past for failures to comply with the law on data access by the public. The recommendations ICO suggest will likely be impossible for the force to implement.
West Yorkshire Police – as expected one of the forces most likely to break the law to try to avoid the production of data – said at a meeting convened by their Police and Crime Commissioner recently that they would be looking at increasing the staffing in the Information Management Department in the next year (budget permitting) to cope with the demands made upon it. “Looking at” and “budget permitting” is another way of saying that nothing will be done to address the problem.
I’ve written on here many times before about how Humberside Police are particularly useless, even in a hotly contested field of local forces.
However even I fell off my chair at the sheer incompetence of the subject access response provided by their Information Compliance department this week.
A subject access request provided by the force amounts to a nonfeasance as the response:
1. Fails to provide the data requested.
2. Is issued outside the legal time limit for a response to be provided.
3. Repeats back the same information put in the original request.
Here’s the letter in full. I have redacted the header.
The key sentences are in the fourth and fifth paragraphs seen above. These are reproduced from the original request. Data cannot be obtained from the Police National Computer – however data that has been entered into the PNC by a local force can be obtained from the same regional police force. Hence the request to Humberside Police.
The substantive reply is seen below:
Here we focus on the second paragraph. It essentially repeats the data I put to police in the first instance.
Consequently the force has failed to react correctly to the subject access request in every conceivable aspect.
This suggests that the intention is to continue frustrate any further request made for the data using the rights conferred in italics in the letter to do so as the response to any further requests that might be made.
The Information Commissioner’s Office has been informed.
I’ve written on here before regarding Humberside Police. There’s something about that force that’s rather disturbing: a more blatent flouting of the College of Policing Code of Ethics, a lower standard of behaviour overall from the force towards the public and an open willingness to treat reports of crime and complaints with equal contempt.
Part of this is down to the geographical isolation of East Yorkshire and especially Hull from the rest of the UK. Humberside Police seem to have a genuine and recurring belief that they can do as they wish well away from prying eyes. The largely inept local media such as The Hull Daily Mail pay a part in assisting this of course. Rather than investigateve journalism that would reveal scandals in local policing they opt for click-bait thrill-a-minute headlines that drive traffic towards advertising. The PCC Keith Hunter is perenially inept at holding the force to account and the overall feeling is that he’s happy to sit out his tenure until pension day arrives.
Some of this flouting of the conventions of good policing can be traced back to the period in which Humberside Police were a Chief Constable-less, rudderless and struggling force on the verge of being put into special measures. Audits routinely returned appalling reports by any metrics devised. Nor has the situation and service standards improved greatly in the four years since minor improvements began.
Like most police forces they have a unique ability to both say one thing and do another, as well as shoot themselves in the foot. While professing to detest and crack down on racism within their ranks the actual tale is quite different.
Which brings us to our story for today.
There’s a page on the Humberside Police website which details upcoming misconduct hearings for the force.
Within the last few days this was changed – without any member of the public being informed or the change advertised. The content on the “new” URL as it appears currently (9.12.20) can be seen below.
The reason for this sudden change is that a senior officer has been chaged with the use of racist language. This is Stewart Miller, a high-profile DCI with Humberside Police who correspondingly have a lot to loose if the revelation of his conduct is proven true and receives appropriate levels of national publicity.
Humberside Police’s Stewart Miller pictured outside of Sheffield Crown Court.
The details of the alleged offence can be seen in the “new” misconduct page the image of which I have provided above. If true this behaviour constitutes an exceptionally severe breach of ethical and moral codes of conduct by this officer. Racist language, discrimiation and suchlike are uttely unacceptable in 2020 and repellant to the majority of civilised people.
However aware that the revelation of this allegation may cause a stir in the national media Humberside Police have changed the URL of the misconduct hearings page just before posting details of this forthcoming hearing.
The “old” page that the majority of people would see or have an existing shortcut to as of 8.12.20
This is a deliberate and purposeful act to attempt to stop the public becoming aware of these allegations against a senior officer. To see the “new”
The data about the hearing I have shown above can only be located from a careful search on the force’s website. This in itself is cause for concern: Humberside Police can of course claim that they have published the details of the misconduct hearing: but they have done so in a way tactically designed to hide the allegations and the public’s knowledge of the hearing. This is of course deplorable but entirely in keeping with that force’s general obsession with bad publicity. Of course now this matter is out in the open the changing of the URL looks even worse.
The effective hiding of the data regarding this misconduct hearing is also designed to protect this officer and his professional reputation. One wonders how this matter will play out in the event of a guilty finding by the force’s PSD and to what extent they will be prepared to publicise any disciplinary measures against this officer.
The alleged comments were made in summer 2020 just a few days after Humberside Police posted on their site positive content from The Association of Police Chiefs regarding the (as it turns out) aspirational aim for the UK police to be anti-racist following the death of George Floyd in the USA during contact with police.
This sort of behaviour amounts to that which will not surprise seasoned watchers of Humberside Police.
9.12.20 update:
Having been caught out over this matter and it having received some publicity via Twitter on 8.12.20 Humberside Police have corrected the changed URL as of this morning, 9.12.20 so that the misconduct hearing for Mr. Miller is now advertised on the main page that most journalists and public would have a link to.
Humberside Police are one of those forces that you wonder how they get away with it.
Largely hidden away from the rest of the country on the edges of East Yorkshire they have a reputation every bit as unwholesome as other local forces.
One reason they do seem to get away with it is both geographical distance from the rest of the UK and of course lack of proper oversight. Their perennially ineffective Police and Crime Commissioner Keith Hunter recently showed the level of consideration he has for the local pubic by manhandling a visitor asking perfectly reasonable questions out of his office. As a former officer himself old habits die hard.
The PCC’s behaviour is of course equal to the contempt for the public shown by the force itself in such matters as inadequate custody suites which – on the basis of the last inspection reports I read – were shockingly poor, particularly in regards to the welfare of young people held in custody.
But while holding the public largely in contempt officers can expect lavish prize ceremonies at The Humber Bridge Country Park Hotel, a venue synonymous with chicken in a basket style meals and budget wedding ceremonies. These police awards stem from the days the force were in a Chief Constable-less mess which almost ended up with them being put into special measures. Handing out cut glass awards helped to boost the morale of the troops, albeit on a temporary basis. Clearly no gongs were forthcoming from any other source at that time and so the force decided to award gongs to themselves.
The days in which the force almost ended up in special measures still hang heavily over Humberside Police. The epithet “Where we do what we want” has seldom applied more to a UK force in modern times, Met Police excepted. Overall in those days and to a lesser extent now Humberside officers still tend to do what they want.
The consequence to all of this is that quite a number of officers from Humberside Police end up before their Professional Standards Department and such hearings now appear to be increasing in frequency. This suggests an increasing breakdown in internal discipline and operational effectiveness that needs to be addressed urgently.
Of course PSD generally tend to go for the low hanging fruit which means the officers most likely to be prosecuted are PC’s caught slacking off, pulling a sickie or whose face doesn’t appear to fit around the station. Occasionally officers are thrown to the wolves just so PSD can appear to be exercising some form of oversight. The more serious miscreants and offenders further up the slippery ladder are ignored. In the modern police force assistance over cover-ups are rewarded with promotion and rocking the boat by sacking someone who knows “where the bodies are buried”, metaphorically speaking of course, has the potential to bring the whole house of cards tumbling down.
So this recent case seen directly below reminded me of a well-publicised matter from a few years back – which is still a shocker – which I will discuss in a short while.
Busted!
As you can see the basic charge is that this PC has been passing confidential police information on to criminals. Guaranteed this data will have been specifically requested by Ronnie and Reggie, will be of considerable use to said criminals and there will have been a payment involved somewhere down the line. That’s the way these things work.
Police databases include something called the PND or Police National Database. This is a huge wealth of half-truth, rumour and suspicion which will have entries on just about any person who has come into contact with the police for any purpose. Unlike the Police National Computer which must be accurate (containing as it does details of convictions, cautions etc.) the PND can contain outright unsupported rumours, slurs and spite.
Do please bear in mind you have no right of access to whatever falsehoods might be stored on the PND about you: although you can make a request for all the data uploaded by an individual force about you to PND. You then have a legal right of correction of the same.
Which brings us back round to Humberside Police.
As we’ve already seen there’s a tendency in the force to dip into and out of police systems for officer’s own benefit. Any access to PNC or PND is logged however so anyone doing so is easy to locate. Officers dipping into databases for their own curiosity or benefit tend to forget this.
Which brings us to DC Julian McGill.
Busted! Again.
The report above isn’t the full story as there’s been several instances of computer misuse from this officer over the years. This resulted in a final written warning and the hearing described below in which his career was on the line:
Believable? You decide!
McGill at the time was serving as part of the local Police Federation. A fact that will have of course been unlikely to influence the position of the misconduct panel in any way! Generally gross misconduct results in only one outcome and since the offending act was admitted (he could hardly deny it given his access was logged) the decision of the panel was very much at odds with the seriousness of the offence.
However this all ties into my original premise that Humberside Police – situated away from prying eyes – seek to do what they like. Accessing police databases for their own use is simply one part of this and the brushing aside of an instance of gross misconduct is a further example.
Legal Babble 