2022/25203 - Sharps alleged to be behind stickers and posters
REQUEST
- With regard to the alleged report from Newport Local Authority referred to in your email to LGB Alliance Cymru of 19 May, please confirm whether the occurrence number is 2200022527 and identify time/date reported and location referred to. If this is not the occurrence referred to please provide the relevant occurrence number, and identify time/date reported and location referred to
- With regard to the same occurrence number(s), please supply time/date the incident(s) is alleged to have happened.
- In your Press Office email to Women’s Rights Network on 26 January 2022, containing your media statement, you identified six reports ‘in relation to posters containing offensive material’ and stated that such posters had been found to have ‘sharp objects’ behind them. The numbers given in that press statement are:
- 2100368771 – Wednesday 20 October
- 2100434426 – Monday 13 December
- 2200003702 – Tuesday 4 January
- 2200016821 – Sunday 16 January
- 2200022527 – Friday 21 January (referred to at Q1 above)
- 2200025188 – Sunday 23 January
Please supply the text of the reports made to Gwent Police in relation to these 6 occurrence numbers, including date/time reported, what was the content of the stickers/posters in question and the investigative enquiries undertaken and recorded on the occurrence logs. Please state specifically which of these six occurrences included reports of sharp objects (pins and glass are specified in the statement) found behind the stickers.
- Please confirm how many stickers or posters have been alleged to have sharp objects (including but not restricted to glass or pins) behind them, reported to you by the Local Authority.
- Please confirm if this ‘glass’ behind a sticker/poster you refer to in your email of 19 May (which we think, as at Q1, is occurrence number 2200022527) was reported first to the Local Authority by a third party prior to it being reported to you by the Local Authority, or did the Local Authority find it themselves. If it was reported to them by a third party, please provide full details of that report with time/date and alleged location (appreciating that you will not be able to identify the name of the person concerned).
- Has Gwent Police found any glass or pins or other sharps behind posters or stickers, independent of reports by the local authority? If so, please provide full details of how this is alleged to have been found. You will of course be aware that the city centre has many hundreds of stickers covering a wide range of topics.
- With regard to occurrences of sharps behind stickers or posters, please state the contents or messages on the stickers or posters. Please be specific as your combined statements as reported in the media link the allegations about sharps to women promoting sex-based rights but we have seen no evidence to justify such a link.
- With regard to the occurrences where sharps were alleged to be found, please confirm whether the stickers or posters were retained by the Local Authority and if these materials and the ‘sharps’ allegedly found were forensically examined or not:
8.1 If not either retained or forensically examined, please provide full reasons in respect of both retention and forensic examination.
8.2 If retained and forensically examined, please provide results of that examination.
- Please confirm if any photographic evidence has been obtained of:
9.1 The location of the alleged ‘sharps’
9.2 The ‘glass’, ‘pins’ or other sharps themselves
9.3. The sticker under which it was allegedly found
- Please detail what CCTV cameras (local authority or private) are in the location of the stickers or posters under which sharps were allegedly found and what enquiries were made to examine these. Please confirm if they showed any person placing the ‘sharps’ under the stickers or any person making their way to or from that location.
- If glass and pins were found, is a charge of attempted assault being considered? If not, why not? Is there insufficient evidence for this?
- Your internal review of FOI 2022/24881 states 'there were no offences or incidents which were relevant to the information requested,' Please explain how this information and key word search relates to the six occurrences listed above and whether any of the three records highlighted are one of those six. Please explain how all six records were not identified in the key word search.
- Given the response to FOI 2022/24881, that you have found no records of an offence of a poster (or sticker) being booby trapped, will you now publicly withdraw the insinuation that posters or stickers asserting women’s sex-based rights and experiences of violence have been hiding sharps? Will you apologise to the specific woman whose case gave rise to these insinuations? If not, please explain how you substantiate the implications of your statements eg as reported by the South Wales Argus on 25 January 2022 and the BBC on 26 January.