21 October (Part 1) - The obscene blog. An update
Following Bexleyheath police’s failure to achieve any meaningful investigation into the Bexley council inspired obscene blog and their written response which included glaring technical errors a Freedom of Information request was sent to the Metropolitan Police, the progress of which, or lack of, has been as follows…
• 2nd September 2011. Information sought on the dates of four
different aspects of the failed enquiry.
• 6th September. FOI rejected claiming personal information had been sought.
• 6th September. Original FOI divided into its four component and
resubmitted as four FOIs.
• 9th September. FOIs acknowledged, one rejected as being personal.
(Subject to appeal.)
• 12th October. Reminder to Met. Police that the 20 days had expired.
• 18th October. Complaint of no response from Met Police sent to the Information Commissioner.
• 20th October. Police reply to my enquiry of 12th October.
Yesterday’s response from the Metropolitan Police and the exchange of emails
over the past 24 hours show that the police lost the FOIs. They issued four acknowledgements
to the requests made on 6th September and accept that their IT systems issued them but
the requests themselves are simply lost. Despite the police locally doing their best
to obstruct justice by doing little or nothing useful, marking the file RESTRICTED,
and attempting a technically inept excuse for their inaction, I am inclined to believe
that the FOIs were indeed the subject of an administrative or IT error and the
four FOIs, with a minor change of wording, have been resubmitted today. All four
have been accepted.
All FOIs were submitted electronically via the Met. Police’s website and all
correspondence was by email.