Further to my Editorial yesterday “Is there really Freedom of Information in Cayman Islands?” at: http://www.ieyenews.com/wordpress/the-editor-speaks-is-there-really-freedom-of-information-in-cayman-islands/

The original request was:

Sent: Thursday, July 24, 2014 9:37 AM

Subject: FOI Request – DUI

FOI request:

1. Number of persons employed by Cayman Islands Government convicted

of driving while intoxicated while operating government vehicles 2011,

2012,2013.

2. Number of persons employed by Cayman Islands Government convicted

of other traffic offences while operating government vehicles 2011,

2012,2013.

3. Number of persons employed by Cayman Islands Government convicted

of driving while intoxicated 2011, 2012,2013.

4. Number of Cayman Islands Government vehicles involved in road accidents 2011,2012,2013

From the RCIPS:

Wednesday, November 19, 2014 7:36 PM

Below are the figures for the other Government Departments:

2011- 90

2012-84

2013-85

END

However, there are many more outstanding requests and they have only supplied half of first request and none of the rest.

The results are actually shocking. Government employees driving whilst intoxicated government vehicles averaging over the three-year period at 86. I wonder if any disciplinary action was ever taken against these employees? I also wonder if any were repeat offenders? The figures over the three years are consistent, especially the last two years.

The following is from a reader in response to my Editorial yesterday:

Peter Polack’s experience mirrors that of many people in the UK, including myself, who have tried to pursue complex FOI requests involving the police.

Just over 13 years ago I was engaged in a year-long investigation into our local speed camera programme. As the data stacked up the police started to realise that I was about to blow the lid off the very embarrassing fact that the cameras weren’t making the roads safer. At one site the casualty reductions credited to the cameras were actually the result of road improvements and at another all they had done was move the accident hot spot 200 yards up the road. At that second site the stretch of road had actually become more dangerous since the cameras were installed but the police were claiming a 43% casualty reduction. Bottom line – in the first year of camera operations fatal accidents in Hampshire rose to over 100, the highest total for over a decade. The police response was to re-introduce ‘high visibility’ roads policing and although the casualty figures predictably dropped they still wouldn’t admit that the whole speed camera programme was a fiasco. In fact the Chief Constable (who is now the House of Lords Commissioner for Standards) threatened to fight anyone who challenged the cameras in court, a threat he later had to withdraw.

It turned out that several speed camera sites were on roads with no history of speed-related crashes. One was on a road that had been accident-free for the previous three years and another was in the wrong place. Other things that came to light were the fact that a camera had been installed in Southampton without a power supply so sat there unusable for eight months and another site had also sat unused for months because it had been installed without proper DfT authorisation.

Needless to say the police got a bit pissed off. They started obstructing the investigation by arguing that the cost of complying with my requests exceeded the statutory £450 limit. When that failed they successfully applied to the ICO (who in my opinion was in their pockets anyway) to have my requests included in their chargeable services along with things like copies of accident reports for insurance claims. That was a farce. The first time they tried to charge me for the records their ‘invoice’ failed to comply with the VAT regulations, which under UK law is a criminal offence. Eventually, they resorted to simply declaring my FOI requests vexatious under Section 14 of the Act.

All of which only delayed the inevitable. The so-called Safety Camera Partnership, which involved police, local authorities and the emergency services, started to crumble. I know about four years after my investigation was stopped they hadn’t had a six-monthly steering group meeting for nearly two years, the website wasn’t being updated, several of the camera sites didn’t work (one damaged camera site remained unrepaired for nine months) and their joke annual report wasn’t being produced any more. In effect the lies had caught up with them and the organisation had run out of steam.

My point? The police in the UK are experts at obstructing FOI, after all they’ve had 14 years experience at it, and that’s probably why RCIPS were originally going to have a civilian FOI officer. However, the clear lesson of history is that obstructing FOI requests, as is clearly happening here, only delays the inevitable and makes the police look silly.

Name withheld by request