Suspended Officers (FOI Ref: 588/26)

Regarding police officers suspended from duty in relation to allegations of sexual misconduct or sexual offences.

Please provide:

1. Current Suspensions: The total number of police officers currently suspended on full pay (as of the date of this request) where the reason for suspension includes allegations of sexual misconduct, sexual harassment, sexual assault, or rape.
2. Cost of Suspensions: The total gross salary paid to officers suspended for sexual misconduct/sexual offences during the financial year 2024/2025 (April 1, 2024 to March 31, 2025) and for the current financial year to date (April 1, 2025 to present).
3. Duration of Investigations: Of those currently suspended for the reasons listed in Question 1, please provide a breakdown of how long they have been suspended. Specifically, how many have been suspended for:
• 6 to 12 months
• 12 to 24 months
• Longer than 24 months

Response

Please find enclosed our response.

For Q1 and Q3:

For Q2:

2024/2025 - £384,766.35

2025/2026 - £578,538.12

2026/2027 - £54,052.90

We want our officers to uphold the highest of standards, so the public has the utmost confidence in them. Any form of Sexual misconduct is simply unacceptable, but when it is done by a police officer - who holds a position of power and someone the public should trust - it must be rooted out and eliminated. Our Professional Standards department, take a robust stance, carrying out thorough investigations, to do everything we can to maintain public confidence and trust in policing. This will provide reassurance to the public that we mean it when we say we’ll do all we can to preserve and rebuild trust. We want our officers to uphold the highest of standards, so the public has the utmost confidence in them. We are committed to rooting out abuse of power, criminality and corruption whenever we find evidence of it.

Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that this data has been extracted from a number of data sources used by forces for police purposes. The detail collected to respond specifically to your request may be subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large-scale recording system. Consequently, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are considered when interpreting the data. 

The figures provided therefore are our best interpretation of data which has relevance to your request, but you should be aware that the collation of figures for ad hoc requests may have limitations and this should be considered when those data are used.  

If you decide to write an article / use the enclosed data, we would ask you to take into consideration the factors highlighted in this document so as to not mislead members of the public or official bodies or misrepresent the relevance of the whole or any part of this disclosed material. 

As recommended as good practice by the Information Commissioner’s Office a version of this response may be published on the West Midlands Police website. 

Additional information  

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Published items | West Midlands Police 

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Reviews and Appeals - Freedom of Information - West Midlands Police (west-midlands.police.uk) 

Please note that such an appeal must be received within 40 working days of the date of this correspondence. Any such request received after this time will only be considered at the discretion of the FOI Unit.