In August year I wrote a post relating to my submission of an an FOIA request to the Metropolitan Police concerning Murders and Ethnicity in London. How many murders had there been? How many had involved Knives etc? and how many were committed by black males on black males.
The response I received was basically this
The MPS is unable to disclose information which is being used as part of an investigation. There is a legal requirement to refrain from disclosing information which would place the integrity of an investigation or any future investigations at risk. Once the investigation or legal process is complete, some information may be deemed suitable for disclosure.
In addition, disclosure of the information requested could identify living persons captured by the scope of this request. Individuals could analyse the information (and along with local knowledge and information already disclosed) identify those concerned as part of the investigation.
This would hinder the prevention and detection of crime and also prejudice the MPS’s ability to fairly conduct an investigation and future investigations of this nature.
A subsequent appeal to the Met just received a confirmation of their original Refusal, which I contend, was based on a large untruth.
In response to an appeal to the Information Commissioner the Met repeated the alleged untruth and the Information Commissioner upheld their Refusal.
I had run out of road, but I’m not the type to let them fob me off like that. So…….I bided my time and submitted a new request, a slightly watered down version of the original, but no point in just submitting a duplicate.
Well, blow me down with a feather, they only went and answered this time.
The information they supplied me was nothing more than the bare minimum in answer to the below questions;
For the years 2022 and 2023 could you please tell me
a) How many murders and attempted murders were recorded?
b) How many of those involved a knife or other sharp/bladed instrument?
c) In how many of the total number were the Victim and Suspect/Accused both/all black males?
I’m too long and far removed to be able to interpret the figures with any authority, I can’t really make valid comparisons, but I do know how to display the raw data.
It’s for others to decide whether the number of offences committed by black males on black males is statistically significant, but at least we have an idea what it looks like now.
Cheers. Begs the question why supply the data now and refuse before? One wonders if MOPAC have this data, let alone included in any reporting outside the MPS.
The stats were supposedly lifted from live CRIS data. I’ve now idea how that relates to figures supplied to MOPAC