Does anyone know how to FOI use of police time in the City of London?

[MsTiggywinkletoyou]

Is it possible to find out how many calls for police assistance are usually made on a weeknight, and how many are attended by multiple car-loads of officers? Is there a pattern for the non-investigation of certain calls for assistance, for example with regard to domestic violence? Is there a pattern of responding quickly to calls from certain parties, such as large corporate employers?

I know the City has a reputation for being secretive about its governance, but policing matters ought to be subject to public scrutiny, right? If it is a case of "who pays the piper calls the tune", then journalists could have a field day.

This is a good website as your request and their answer are public as are the number of days they take to respond to the request or their reasons for refusing. It makes them a bit more accountable.

There's also information on what sort of things to include in a request.

www.whatdotheyknow.com/select_authority

Before you do an FOI I'd browse a few to see what the good requests look like.

I have done them anonymously before.

I don't want to pop your bubble on this but I suspect you'll find they followed their policy in sending the officers. While the actual removal looked highly dubious to me - not sure under what authority the officers stepped in at the end to assist the event security - sending 7 officers to a call about a breach of the peace (which is most likely how the call was framed) at an event with, presumably, quite a few attendees does not sound unreasonable. They aren't going to know how it's actually going to go until they're there and it's happening. They would need to be concerned about the potential for it all to kick off.

I would focus on their policy in involving themselves when a property holder physically removes someone from a building or protestors block access to an event.

The Whatdotheyknow.com website is pretty fab.

Our office called the police because a very angry man kept marching in and screaming in our faces (the women never the men). He also went into the venue where a mum and babies group was being held - even through he displayed aggression only to women (until the dads started to come along too). The only police who came to speak to the boss was a local community policeman who shrugged his shoulders and said they couldn’t do anything unless he physically assaulted one of us. We ended up outing in an extra door in the corridor and locks/peephole.

And they send 7 police along at the behest of who?

Than ks Stealth

And others!

LordProf the officer wasn't lying about what the police could do directly against the man (though shouting and screaming at people - surprised there wasn't a public order offence in their somewhere, causing distress and alarm). What it seems he didn't mention was that as the property owner (or acting on their behalf) you could have ejected the angry man (without assaulting him) and the police could have attended in order to act if there was a breach of the peace or a criminal offence while you did so. The police could not just eject him for you.

In application, the law here is pretty sexist(and ableist and ageist, etc.) - women are fairly obviously not going to be in a position to physically enforce their rights to their property as easily men do. But mainly, male or female, you need quite a few people to do it well (Line up in front of him and crowd him out is the common, legal, way). If the angry man pushes you he's assaulting you and the police can step in and arrest him.

In the JW case they sent 7 officers along because they were, presumably, told there was likely to be a breach of the peace at a public event with lots of people, while the building enforced it's right to eject a member of the audience. If you'd called the police and told them there was likely to be a breach of the peace at an event with lots of people, they could have attended as the officers in the JW case did.

I'm not saying this is an OK state of play. I'm just pointing out most of this looks, to me, well within the law and standard approaches the police take, rather than the police acting as a private security force for the event organizers.

*JL, not JW !

Hopefully there will be a decent article in one of the weekend papers

I know that they couldn’t do anything - we were lucky that a coworker is ex military and barked him out the time he did get into the office, otherwise we talked to him through the chain on the door.

Yes scary stuff and we were always watching out for him in the street when we went out for lunch. He had a bit of a fixation on out boss for some reason and always came demanding to speak to him - the screaming was when we told him that the boss wasn’t around (which he wasn’t).