Received: 25 January 2024

1) how many officers and staff who have been arrested since 1/1/2019 have submitted a complaint or grievance for unlawful arrest or unlawful detention? 

3) how many of these have been found to be upheld? 

4) how many complaints of unlawful arrest or detention are still open? 

Please can you break this down into 

yearly figures. 

Responded: 11 March 2024

Following clarification with the requester, the request was revised as “the number of Hampshire officers and staff who have been arrested by Hampshire constabulary that the Police Federation of England and Wales (PFEW) has offered assistance to relating to unlawful arrest or detention”.  It should be noted that the PFEW only represents police officers and not other “staff”. 

Due to the low numbers who have been supported by the PFEW in matters suggested in the request, the PFEW considers that the release of such information would constitute personal data of the individual(s) concerned.  This is because we consider that the individual(s) would be identifiable from the disclosure of the information, either by the requester and/or others with knowledge of the constabulary even if they are not expressly identified by name. 

The PFEW does not consider that it has any legitimate interest in providing the personal data in the Information. Furthermore it considers that the need to protect the interests/fundamental rights and freedoms of the affected data subjects militates in favour of not disclosing the personal data. As such, the PFEW considers that there is not a lawful basis for it to process the relevant personal data by providing it in response to this request, and to do so would contravene Article 5(1)(a) of the UK GDPR, namely the principle that personal data "shall be processed lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner in relation to the data subject".  Accordingly, the PFEW relies on the exemption set out in section 40(3A)(a) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 ("FOIA") which provides that information which constitutes personal data is "exempt information" if disclosure of the information to a member of the public otherwise than under FOIA would contravene any of the data protection principles.