2022/24969 - Contaminated Evidence

REQUEST

I am placing a request for information under the FOIA.

I am not requesting specific documents, but would like the following questions answered please:

1)       In the last 5 years, how many pieces of evidence have been contaminated by frontline officers?

2)       In the last 5 years, how many cases have been impacted because of the contamination of evidence by frontline officers?

3)       In the last 5 years, how many cases have not made it as far as court due to the contamination of evidence by frontline officers?

4)       What has the contamination of evidence cost the Police force, in the last 5 years? Please breakdown per annum.

5)       In the last 5 years, during the investigation of crime, how many footwear marks recovered from a crime scene have been identified/eliminated to a frontline officer?

6)       In the last 5 years, during the investigation of crime, how many finger marks recovered from a crime scene have been identified/eliminated to a frontline officer?

7)       In the last 5 years, during the investigation of crime, how many DNA samples recovered from a crime scene have been identified/eliminated to a frontline officer?

8)       What is the cost to the force per year in identification/elimination of samples from scenes, to a frontline officer?

9)       How frequently do Police officers receive forensic awareness training?

10)     What is the cost, per officer, of this training?

 

RESPONSE

1)  In the last 5 years, how many pieces of evidence have been contaminated by frontline officers?

This information isn’t held.

 

2)  In the last 5 years, how many cases have been impacted because of the contamination of evidence by frontline officers?

This information isn’t held.

 

3)  In the last 5 years, how many cases have not made it as far as court due to the contamination of evidence by frontline officers?

This information isn’t held.

 

4)  What has the contamination of evidence cost the Police force, in the last 5 years? Please breakdown per annum.

We could not provide this as a figure. Any financial figure would be low from our perspective as forensic examination work would not commence on contaminated evidence so we’d need to look into the resourcing costs of processing/courier etc. We are not sure how officers would calculate a quantitative response, perhaps the cost of other work required that wouldn’t have been completed had the contamination not occurred? The larger impact of contaminated evidence is mostly qualitative, in the form of wider impact to the progression of the investigation which we are unable to answer. This would need to be provided by investigation teams and would likely take weeks to produce.

 

5)  In the last 5 years, during the investigation of crime, how many footwear marks recovered from a crime scene have been identified/eliminated to a frontline officer?

This information isn’t held.

 

6)  In the last 5 years, during the investigation of crime, how many finger marks recovered from a crime scene have been identified/eliminated to a frontline officer?

We do not hold this information directly. Officers at scene can be checked against Elimination when they are listed within Scene logs so would be recorded, if a ‘hit’ is made against Police Elimination Database (PED). However, this would require manual searching of each case for the last 5 years and integration to assess circumstances, so would take considerable amounts of time, for numerous staff.

 

Section 12 – Excess Cost

 

The exemption applicable to the information you have requested for this question can be found at Section 12(1) of the Act and this refusal notice is issued under Section 17.

 

Section 12(1) “does not oblige a public authority to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying with the request would exceed the appropriate limit.” 

 

In the case of a police force, the appropriate limit is set at £450, which is calculated at £25 per hour (i.e., 18 hours). Gwent Police would have to conduct a manual search to find and extract the information for this question. This would take more than 18 hours of staff time therefore we are unable to answer this question and the exemption is engaged.

 

 

7)  In the last 5 years, during the investigation of crime, how many DNA samples recovered from a crime scene have been identified/eliminated to a frontline officer?

We do not collate this data.

 

8)  What is the cost to the force per year in identification/elimination of samples from scenes to a frontline officer?

Where we have received identifications against an elimination database, we would need to collate the costs of those as it would depend on the work it derived from. It could be directly from a crime scene stain which only required profiling and reporting, or it could’ve been from an exhibit which was subjected to multiple examinations and interpretations before any samples could be identified from the Elim databases. Producing this would rely on figures from Q5-7.

 

9)  How frequently do Police officers receive forensic awareness training?

Core considerations are given to forensic evidence recovery, and this is covered through the training course in a number of areas that won’t have ‘forensic awareness titles’ such as in sudden deaths, so the officers consider that there could be foul play and are forensically aware at what might seem initially a routine incident could become a murder enquiry so evidence could otherwise be lost, for example.

 

However, the main input received by officers is a full day training delivered by training staff from our Scenes of crime department who give them in depth training that includes identifying forensic opportunities, protecting scenes and samples, and how to recover forensics.  This is a comprehensive hands-on day delivered by the force leads in this area.

 

10)  What is the cost, per officer, of this training?

There would not be a cost implication (other than diversion of resources for the day) to this training as it is internally delivered.