FOI 22036-25 Offensive comments
Request to Northamptonshire Police:
How many times has your force spoken to people, either by visiting their home or workplace or speaking to them elsewhere, after receiving complaints about them that they made comments on social media or in person or in any other format that were offensive but not necessarily a criminal offence?
Please provide the full number of people spoken to about their behaviour broken down for this calendar year (2025) to date, last calendar year (2024) and the year before (2023).
Please provide as much narrative as possible about the nature of the complaint received (were the comments made online or in person or in another form etc. what was the nature of the complaint - ie, what words were allegedly used that formed the alleged bad or offensive behaviour that wasn't necessarily a criminal offence etc. and were they supposedly islamophobic, transphobic, anti-semitic etc.)
What was the result in each case that someone was spoken to?
Response:
Northamptonshire Police systems are designed primarily for the management of individual cases and not for the production of statistical information for Freedom Of Information responses.
Section 17 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 requires Northamptonshire Police, when refusing to provide such information (because the information is exempt) to provide you the applicant with a notice which:
(a) states that fact,
(b) specifies the exemption in question and
(c) states (if that would not otherwise be apparent) why the exemption applies.
The exemption applicable to the information requested is:
Section 12(1) – Exemption where cost of compliance exceeds appropriate limit
The information you are requesting is not held by Northamptonshire Police in any reasonably retrievable form. The only means of establishing information of the nature you are requesting would be by way of manual examination of each record. Our information retrieval process generally relies on a computer ran report which captures any information recorded upon the surface of a record or within specified fields. Where relevant information is held deeper in the record, or outside of a specified field, a manual assessment is usually required to retrieve that information.
By way of further explanation, an offensive comment could be absolutely anything that someone finds offensive and depending entirely on the nature of the comment and the context in which it was said/written, if reported to us could be recorded as several different things.
The initial classification could be recorded as ASB, a welfare concern, suspicious circumstances, violence against a person, domestic incident and so on and the National Standard for Incident Recording (NSIR) closing codes again could vary, they could be Malicious / Nuisance Comms but equally could be ASB, Hate Inc, Domestic, Civil Dispute even RTC amongst other options.
To give some examples:
An altercation following an RTC, one party makes comments to another they find offensive – the RTC would be recorded unless the comments amounted to a crime then the crime would be recorded (e.g. hate crime)
A person reports their ex for sending unwanted messages to their Instagram account – a Domestic incident, or perhaps a Harassment would be recorded.
Ongoing neighbour issues with threats made – recorded as ASB
A person is reporting a civil matter and is not happy as they find someone’s attitude offensive – this would be recorded as a civil matter
It is my assessment that the cost of providing you with the information requested would exceed the 'appropriate level' as set out in the Freedom of Information (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004.
Northamptonshire Police receives on average 1,000 phone calls a day.
My assessment is that it would cost 1,000 (approximate number of records per day) x 2 minutes each (minimum) = over 33 hours at £25 per hour to respond to your request, which exceeds the 'appropriate limit' (currently £450 for 'prescribed costs'). This is to review one day. This would not include incidents reported to an officer whilst out on duty.
In view of the above, and in accordance with the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, please take this letter as a Refusal Notice.
You may wish to refine and resubmit your request so that it reduces the costs shown above and is then within the 'appropriate limit' shown above. (I cannot think of a means to refine the request in order to provide the information you are seeking) but if you would like some further information about how to proceed with your request then please contact: