Threats made by SYP officers to the Party of Women

Request

1. I am making contact on behalf of a free speech campaign, Just Answer The Question, to ascertain as to whether SYP officers have threatened a candidate standing for the Party of Women in the Sheffield Heeley division with arrest under the Malicious Communications Act? If so, what was the precise basis for this intervention?

2. In addition, I would like to know if SYP has ever handed over public money to the political campaign, Stonewall?

Clarification

Please could you provide a time frame to assist with our search. Are you also
specifically looking for a record of misconduct?

Request

Concerning the officer who contacted the Party of Women candidate for
Sheffield Heeley I am not asking about misconduct but confirmation or denial
that he threatened to arrest her and, if so, on what legal basis he did so given
her election leaflet had been passed as legitimate by the post office.

Response

Section 1 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) places two duties on public authorities. Unless exemptions apply, the first duty at Section 1(1)(a) is to confirm or deny whether the information specified in a request is held. The second duty at Section 1(1)(b) is to disclose information that has been confirmed as being held.

Where exemptions are relied upon Section 17 of FOIA requires that we provide the applicant with a notice which:

a) states that fact
b) specifies the exemption(s) in question and
c) states (if that would not otherwise be apparent) why the exemption applies.

South Yorkshire Police can neither confirm nor deny that it holds information relevant to your request as the duty in section 1(1)(a) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 does not apply, by virtue of the following exemptions:

Section 40(5) Personal Information

This is an absolute exemption and therefore a Public Interest Test is not relevant.

However, for clarity if records were held that contained the personal information required, it would be a breach of the Data Protection Act 2018 to provide those details to a third party (i.e. not the person involved) without permission of any individuals concerned.

2. We do not have a membership or association with Stonewall.

Please note, every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that data has been extracted from data sources used by this force for police purposes. The detail collected to respond specifically to your request is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large-scale recording systems and information assets.

The figures provided therefore are our best interpretation of relevance of data to your request, but you should be aware that the collation of figures/data for any requests may have limitations, and this should be taken into account when those data are used.

Police forces do not use generic systems or identical procedures for capturing the data. For these reasons this response to your questions should not be used for comparison purposes with responses you may receive from other police forces.