Taser Deployment 2019-2022
Publication Number: 1524
FOI Number: 18610
Disclosure:
The Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) places two duties on public authorities:
Unless exemptions apply, the first duty (at Section 1(1)(a) is to confirm or deny whether the information specified in a request is held.
The second duty (at Section 1(1)(b) is to disclose information that has been confirmed as being held.
However, where exemptions are relied upon (Section 17 of FOIA), there is a requirement to provide the applicant with an explanation either:
- a) stating the fact
- b) detailing the exemption(s) in question and
- c) why the exemption applies (if not apparent).
Information Request:
– which has been re-numbered and we have presumed that c)202 for questions 2 - 8 represents c)2020:
1) Could you detail how many times a Taser gun has been successfully fired at an individual in the following years:
a)2022
b)2021
c)2020
d)2019
2) Of those who were shot by a Taser gun, could you provide an ethnicity breakdown in the following years
a)2022
b)2021
c)202
d)2019
3)Of those who were shot by a Taser gun, could you provide a gender breakdown in the following years:
a)2022
b)2021
c)202
d)2019
4)Of those who were shot by a Taser gun, how many were under the age of 18 at the time that they had a Taser fired at them, in the following years
a)2022
b)2021
c)202
d)2019
5)Of those who were shot by a Taser gun AND were under the age of 18 at the time of the incident, could you detail how many were Asian, Black or any other ethnic minority in the following years?
a)2022
b)2021
c)202
d)2019
6)Of the incidents where a Taser gun was fired at an individual, how many took place in a setting where vulnerable people reside or are present, i.e care home, assisted living accommodations, psychiatric hospital or any other health care facilities in the following years?
a)2022
b)2021
c)202
d)2019
7) Of the incidents where a Taser gun was fired at an individual, how many resulted in the individual being referred to mental health services?
a)2022
b)2021
c)202
d)2019
8) How many times has an individual died as a direct consequence of being Tasered by one of your police officers in the following years?
a)2022
b)2021
c)202
d)2019
FOI Duty
First Duty – Essex Police holds some of the information relating to your request
Second Duty – See below
Fact - It is not possible to extract and verify all the data in your request
Exemption - Section 12(1)
Refusal - Section 17(5) of FOIA
Reasoning – Essex Police are unable to provide a comprehensive data report in respect of all questions set out above.
In respect of Questions 6 & 7, this data is not held in a readily extractable format, nor is it held on a central log. Each crime file would need to be identified and manually reviewed in order to determine the details requested and a bespoke report developed, which is outside of the Act.
To establish if information is held would, therefore, exceed the time and cost limits under the FOIA and would qualify as the creation of data as the results cannot be processed by means of purely sorting or filtering data sources or running a database query tool. There is no requirement under the act to create data purely to answer FOI requests.
Duty to assist – When refusing a request on cost (Section 12(1)/12(2)), outside of the act and in effort to assist we can provide the following
Essex Police can report as follows:
Caveat: The data is correct as at 23 May 2023.
It has been noted that your request is for calendar years, please note that published information on all aspects of the Use of Force is available, however not by calendar year.
You are invited to refer to following links of interest, where data is published by the Home Office for all police forces – UK wide every March, so the data is currently being organised with a view to a March 2023 update in due course:
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/use-of-taser-statistics
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/police-use-of-force-statistics
Question 1: Number of times a Taser has been fired:
|
Year |
Total |
|
2019 |
29 |
|
2020 |
65 |
|
2021 |
104 |
|
2022 |
93 |
Above mentioned second link to Home Office data tables, of which Table 13: CED incidents and use type by police force area, England and Wales, 2017/18 to 2021/22
Question 2: Ethnicity
|
Year |
Asian or Asian British |
Black or Black British |
Mixed |
Other Ethnic Group |
White |
|
2019 |
3 |
26 |
|||
|
2020 |
1 |
11 |
2 |
51 |
|
|
2021 |
1 |
20 |
1 |
1 |
81 |
|
2022 |
3 |
8 |
2 |
6 |
74 |
Above mentioned second link to Home Office data tables, of which Table 16: Number of times tactics were used, by police force and officer perceived ethnicity of person involved
Question 3: Gender
|
Year |
Female |
Male |
Other |
|
2019 |
27 |
2 |
|
|
2020 |
6 |
59 |
|
|
2021 |
5 |
99 |
|
|
2022 |
9 |
84 |
Above mentioned second link to Home Office data tables, of which Table 15: Number of times tactics were used, by police force and officer perceived gender of person involved
Question 4: Age
|
Year |
11-17 |
18-34 |
35-49 |
50-64 |
65&Over |
Unknown |
|
2019 |
2 |
17 |
7 |
1 |
2 |
|
|
2020 |
1 |
39 |
18 |
6 |
1 |
|
|
2021 |
6 |
53 |
34 |
9 |
1 |
1 |
|
2022 |
42 |
41 |
4 |
4 |
2 |
Above mentioned second link to Home Office data tables, of which Table 14: Number of times tactics were used, by police force and officer perceived age of person involved
Question 5: Under 18s & Ethnicity
No further information will be provided for Question 5, on the basis that the provision or breakdown of granular data by number of Taser incidents by year, referencing Under 18 & Ethnicity could potentially identify individuals, as the data is low in number.
Question 7:
Notwithstanding the Reasoning set above, to support Question 7, the above link data tables has a Table 17 which provides the number of times tactics were used, by police force and officer perceived health condition of person involved, which you may find of interest.
Question 8: Death from Taser Incident
Essex Police can confirm that ZERO deaths have occurred as a direct consequence of a Taser Incident over the time frame of this request.
Every effort is made to ensure that the data provided by Essex Police is accurate and complete. However, Essex Police systems are designed primarily for the management of individual cases and not for the purposes of providing data to answer specific FOI enquiries. Please note although data can be extracted from a number of sources via database queries, the results may be subject to inaccuracies. Care should be taken to understand our return when considering the interpretation or further use of the data.