Police manual chapters
Jason Renes made this Official Information request to New Zealand Police
The request was partially successful.
From: Jason Renes
Dear New Zealand Police,
I would like to make an Official Information Act request for copies of the following police manual chapters:
- Missing persons
- People trafficking and migrant smuggling
- Offensive weapons
- Kidnapping and abduction
Yours faithfully,
Jason Renes
From: Ministerial Services
New Zealand Police
Kia ora Jason
I acknowledge receipt of your Official Information Act (OIA) request below, received by New Zealand Police on 19 July 2022.
Your request is being actioned pursuant to the OIA. You can expect a response to your request on or before 16 August 2022.
Kind regards, Brittany
Ministerial Services PNHQ
-----Original Message-----
From: Jason Renes <[FOI #19965 email]>
Sent: Tuesday, 19 July 2022 3:51 pm
To: Ministerial Services <[email address]>
Subject: [EXTERNAL] Official Information request - Police manual chapters
CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe.
Dear New Zealand Police,
I would like to make an Official Information Act request for copies of the following police manual chapters:
- Missing persons
- People trafficking and migrant smuggling
- Offensive weapons
- Kidnapping and abduction
Yours faithfully,
Jason Renes
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Also note, the views expressed in this message may not necessarily reflect those of the New Zealand Police. If you have received this message in error, please email or telephone the sender immediately
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Mark Hanna left an annotation ()
A response to this request was due a week ago. By failing to respond within the legal timeframe, NZ Police are acting unlawfully. I recommend you complain to the Ombudsman about this unlawful delay.
If it helps, I have a template that I use when complaining to the Ombudsman about unlawfully overdue responses to OIA requests: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ad2Z...
From: Ministerial Services
New Zealand Police
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Renes Jason IR 01 22 21197 Response.pdf
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Tēnā koe Jason
Please find attached the response to your Official Information Act
request, received by New Zealand Police on 19 July 2022.
Please accept our apologies for the delay in providing you with this
response.
Ngā mihi
Jeremy
Ministerial Services |
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===============================================================
WARNING
The information contained in this email message is intended for the
addressee only and may contain privileged information. It may also be
subject to the provisions of section 50 of the Policing Act 2008, which
creates an offence to have unlawful possession of Police property. If you
are not the intended recipient of this message or have received this
message in error, you must not peruse, use, distribute or copy this
message or any of its contents.
Also note, the views expressed in this message may not necessarily reflect
those of the New Zealand Police. If you have received this message in
error, please email or telephone the sender immediately
References
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Mark Hanna left an annotation ()
I see Police has withheld a lot of information under section 6(c) of the Official Information Act, asserting that releasing it would be likely to prejudice the maintenance of the law.
In the past, Police has made very questionable decisions to withhold information from Police Manual chapters for this reason. Decisions that it later disagreed with. For example, when releasing the "Burglary and allied offences" chapter, Police at one point withheld information like this under s6(c):
"To ensure no fingerprints are missed, try to find... surfaces that may have been touched"
"Secure any evidence such as tools and instruments used to force entry"
Police later released that document in full to a different requester.
It's possible that Police have made similarly unjustified decisions to withhold information under s6(c) in response to this request. There is no way to know without seeing the information itself.
I recommend you lay a complaint with the Ombudsman regarding Police's decision to withhold some information from these documents.
The Ombudsman's guideline on section 6 refusals is clear that:
"It is not sufficient to simply assert that disclosure of the information will have a prejudicial effect. The public sector agency must be able to identify, with sufficient particularity, the nature of the prejudicial effect and explain how such prejudice will occur in order to meet the tests for withholding in section 6."
In investigating a complaint, the Ombudsman will likely require Police to explain the reason behind their decisions, in order to convince the Ombudsman that the decisions were justified. While considering this, the Ombudsman would also be able to review the information that has been withheld.
Mark Hanna left an annotation ()
NZ Police has published the same five documents on their website today. I don't think the content there is any different, but the versions released on their website do seem to have better accessibility than what they released to you two weeks ago:
https://www.police.govt.nz/about-us/publ...
https://www.police.govt.nz/about-us/publ...
https://www.police.govt.nz/about-us/publ...
https://www.police.govt.nz/about-us/publ...
https://www.police.govt.nz/about-us/publ...
Mark Hanna left an annotation ()
There is actually a small difference between what was released to you and what has been published on the NZ Police website. Not in the content of the documents, so much as the reasons why particular pieces of information have been redacted.
In their response your request, NZ Police said all information they had withheld was done so under sections 6(c) and 6(d) of the OIA.
However, in the documents published on their website, no information was marked as having been refused under section 6(d) of the OIA, and the information redacted from the "Missing persons" chapter was marked as having been withheld under section 9(a)(2) of the OIA.
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- Add an annotation (to help the requester or others)
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Mark Hanna left an annotation ()
A version of the "Offensive weapons, knives and disabling substances" chapter of the Police Manual was released previously in January 2017:
https://fyi.org.nz/request/5014-selected...
I don't believe there is a "Kidnapping and abduction" chapter, but there are chapters called "Abduction" and "Kidnapping for ransom". I don't know if these have previously been released publicly though.
Link to this