Traffic Team and Patrol Vehicles - 2005, 2010 and 2015
Keywords
Road, Traffic, Patrols, Officers, Policing, Staff, Vehicles, Type, Fleet, Policing, Year, Marked, Unmarked, Car, Motorcycle, Response, Covert, Transport, Services, Team, Operations, Manager.
Publication Number
PUB 1296
FOI Reference Number
16316
Request Title
Traffic Team & Patrol Vehicles
Date Range
2015, 2010 and 2005
Information Requested
The request relates to the number of road traffic officers on your staff and the number of vehicles on your fleet used for road traffic policing.
My questions are as follows:
1. How many road traffic officers are currently on your force?
2. How many road traffic officers were on your force in 2015, 2010 and 2005? Please break this down year-by-year. If you require a month to look at from each year, please use October.
3. How many vehicles on your fleet are currently used for road traffic patrols? Please break this down by vehicle type (i.e. car, motorcycle etc.) and state whether each is marked or unmarked.
4. How many vehicles on your fleet were used for road traffic patrols in 2015, 2010 and 2005? Please provide this information in the same format as requested in question three. If you require a month to look at from each year, please use October.
Disclosure with Exemptions
Full disclosure with Section 31(1) exemption
Information Correct as at
For Questions 1 and 2, the data is correct as at 03 November 2021.
For Questions 3 and 4, the data is correct as at 29 October 2021.
Date of Disclosure
19 November 2021
Related Documents/Links
N/A
FOI 16316 Response
Having completed enquiries within Essex Police in respect of Section 1(1)(a), Essex Police does hold information relating to your request, Essex Police can confirm in respect of Section 1(1)(b) the following data:
Caveats:
For Questions 1 and 2, the data is correct as at 03 November 2021.
For Questions 3 and 4, the data is correct as at 29 October 2021.
On the 01 September 2014, Response and Patrol was split into Roads Policing and Local Policing Teams. Before this date, the data is not comparable.
The Transport Services Team only retain records for 7 years, therefore, they are unable to supply data for 2005.
1. How many Road Traffic Officers are currently on your force?
The below table includes Officers in the Collision Investigation Team who provide a Roads Policing Function amongst other functions.
|
Year |
Officer Strength FTE |
Officer Headcount |
|---|---|---|
|
30/09/2021 |
138.78 |
141 |
2. How many Road Traffic Officers were on your force in 2015, 2010 and 2005? Please break this down year-by-year. If you require a month to look at from each year, please use October.
The below table includes the Operations Manager Roads Policing Chief Inspector who sat within the OPC Command Team.
|
Year |
Officer Strength FTE |
Officer Headcount |
|---|---|---|
|
31/03/2015 |
144.52 |
145 |
3. How many vehicles on your fleet are currently used for Road Traffic Patrols? Please break this down by vehicle type (i.e. car, motorcycle etc.) and state whether each is marked or unmarked.
Marked Traffic Patrol vehicle count as at October 2021 is 38. The breakdown is listed below:
Motorcycles – 10
Cars – 22
Cars 4x4 – 6.
4. How many vehicles on your fleet were used for Road Traffic Patrols in 2015, 2010 and 2005? Please provide this information in the same format as requested in question three. If you require a month to look at from each year, please use October.
Marked Traffic Patrol vehicle count as at October 2015 is 48. The breakdown is listed below:
Motorcycles – 10
Cars – 31
Cars 4x4 – 7.
No further details in respect of covert or unmarked vehicles will be provided by virtue of the following exemption:
Section 31(1) Law Enforcement
Evidence of Harm
To disclose details of covert vehicles could cause harm to the Police Service’s ability to protect the public it serves and could prejudice its ability to perform core functions such as the prevention and detection of crime. Releasing this data would give individuals with criminal intent the intelligence required to disrupt Police activity and target innocent members of the public. Criminals would be able to identify in which force areas resources are weak and use this knowledge to their advantage in furthering criminal activity around the county and the country as a whole. The disclosure of information which is likely to undermine the Police Service’s ability to serve the public in preventing and detecting crime and the apprehension and prosecution of offenders can only be considered as being harmful to the public.
Public Interest Test
Factors Favouring Disclosure
The disclosure of this information would adhere to the general principle of openness and transparency and better inform the public about how public funds are spent, better awareness which may reduce crime or lead to more information from the public.
In the current financial climate of cuts and with the call for transparency of public spending this would enable improved public debate.
Factors Against Disclosure
The disclosure of this information would undermine Law Enforcement resulting in more crime being committed. This would have an impact on Police resources and place individuals and the general public at risk. Patterns could be drawn which would enable those intent on criminal activities to strategically plan offences based on this data. The force would then be required to adapt its methods in order to continue to prevent and detect crime.
The Police Service will never disclose information which could identify investigative activity and, therefore, undermine their investigations. To do so would hinder the prevention or detection of crime.
Balancing Test
The Police Service is charged with enforcing the law, preventing and detecting crime and protecting the communities we serve and there is a public interest argument in ensuring we are open and transparent. However, the disclosure of Police resources which would harm the ability of Essex Police to prevent and detect crime is a more influential reason.
As part of that policing purpose, information is gathered which can be highly sensitive relating to high profile investigative activity. Weakening the mechanisms used to monitor any type of criminal activity would place the security of the country at an increased level of danger.
In addition, any disclosure by Essex Police that places the security of the country at risk, no matter how generic, would undermine any trust or confidence individuals have in us, therefore, at this moment in time it is our opinion that for these issues the balance test favours of non-disclosure of the information at this time.
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.