Disclaimer

PoliceComplaint.com publishes statistics compiled from official published sources. This page explains the limits of what those figures can tell you, and what we do and do not accept responsibility for. Please read it before relying on anything here, and before sharing any figure from this site.

We are not affiliated with the police or with any oversight body

PoliceComplaint.com is an independent information resource operated by Copious Ltd. We are not a police force, a police and crime commissioner, the Independent Office for Police Conduct, the Home Office, the Police Investigations and Review Commissioner, the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland, any United States police department, any state attorney general, the United States Department of Justice, or any other government or oversight body. We are not endorsed by, connected with, or acting on behalf of any of them. A complaint submitted to us is not a complaint submitted to any police force or any regulator, and nothing on this site starts, pauses or extends any official process.

This is information, not legal advice

Everything on this site is general information about how complaints and claims against the police work. It is not legal advice, it is not tailored to your circumstances, and reading it does not create a solicitor-client relationship or any other professional relationship between you and us. Your situation may turn on facts this site knows nothing about. Before you act, or decide not to act, take advice from a qualified lawyer in the jurisdiction your matter belongs to.

Time limits in this area are strict and some are short. A limitation period can expire while a complaint is still being investigated. If there is any possibility you may want to bring a claim, take advice on the deadline early rather than waiting for a complaint to conclude.

Where the figures come from, and why they are not perfect

We do not collect data about the police ourselves. Every figure on this site is derived from datasets published by third parties, and each page names the dataset and the period it covers. Those sources are, principally: data.police.uk; the Independent Office for Police Conduct; Home Office use of force statistics; the Office for National Statistics and the 2021 Census; the Washington Post fatal police shootings database; and United States Census Bureau population estimates.

We reproduce and compute from that published data in good faith, but we cannot warrant that it is accurate, complete or current, and we do not adopt it as our own statement of fact. In particular:

• Source data is revised. Publishers restate, correct and withdraw figures. A number correct when we compiled it may since have changed at source.
• Recording practice differs between forces and agencies. Two forces can record the same event differently, or record it in different periods. A force that records complaints more readily will show more complaints. That is not the same as a force whose officers behave worse.
• Fields are frequently left blank. Where a field is incomplete we calculate over the records where it was completed and we say so, which means the denominator is smaller than the total. A high proportion of blanks makes every share calculated from that column less reliable.
• Coverage is not uniform. Not every force or agency reports every dataset, and some datasets cover England and Wales only, or exclude particular territories. Where we know a figure is not publishable we omit it rather than estimate it.
• Derived figures are ours, not the publisher's. Rates, ratios, per-head figures and rankings on this site are calculated by us from the published numbers. The underlying counts are the publisher's; the arithmetic is ours. We state the denominator wherever we state a rate so that you can check it.

What a statistic on this site does not mean

These figures describe recorded events in aggregate. They cannot establish what happened in any individual case, and they are not findings of fact.

• A disparity between one group's share of searches and its share of the population is a measurable difference in outcomes. It is not, on its own, evidence that any officer, force or agency acted unlawfully, and it does not establish a cause.
• A complaint recorded against a force is an allegation. It is not a finding that the allegation was true, and most complaints do not result in any finding against an officer.
• A death recorded as occurring during or following police contact is categorised that way by the publisher. The category does not imply that the police caused the death or acted wrongly.
• A fatal shooting recorded in the United States dataset records that a shooting occurred. It records what the reporting agency entered at the time, not what any court or inquest later found.
• Nothing on this site is intended as an allegation of misconduct, criminality or wrongdoing against any named individual, and no such allegation should be inferred.

If you share a figure from this site

Some pages offer a way to share a statistic. Every one of those statements is generated from the published figures by code and carries its source and its period, precisely so that it can be checked. Even so, when you share a figure you are publishing it yourself, and you are responsible for what you publish. Please check the statement against the source named beside it, keep the source and period attached to it, and do not present it as an allegation about any individual. We accept no responsibility for any consequence of a figure being shared, altered, quoted out of context, or separated from its source and its denominator.

News headlines and external links

Some pages list recent news headlines mentioning a force or agency, collected automatically. Those headlines and links belong to the publishers named. We do not write, edit, verify, summarise or endorse them, we receive nothing for including them, and their appearance on a page does not imply any finding against anyone. We have no control over the content of any external site and accept no responsibility for it. A link is not an endorsement.

Limitation of liability

The material on this website is provided "as is" and without warranties of any kind, whether express or implied, including any implied warranty of accuracy, completeness, currency, satisfactory quality or fitness for a particular purpose.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, we shall not be liable for any technical, editorial, typographical, computational or other error or omission in the information on this site, nor for any inaccuracy, incompleteness or subsequent revision in the third-party data from which it is derived, nor for the content of any linked site. To the fullest extent permitted by law, we shall not be liable for any loss or damage of any kind arising out of or in connection with your use of, or reliance on, this website or anything on it, including any decision taken or not taken, any complaint made or not made, and any deadline missed.

Nothing in this disclaimer excludes or limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for any other liability that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited. If you are a consumer, this disclaimer does not affect your statutory rights.

Jurisdiction

The law described on this site differs by country, and the sections are kept separate for that reason. Material in the United Kingdom section describes the law of England and Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland as stated on the page. Material in the United States section describes United States federal and state law. Do not rely on guidance from one country's section in another country's jurisdiction: a remedy that exists in one may not exist in the other, and the deadlines are different.

Tell us if something is wrong

We would rather correct a figure than defend it. If you believe anything published here is inaccurate, out of date, or unfairly presented, including if you are writing on behalf of a police force or an oversight body, contact us at info@policecomplaint.com with the page address and what you say is wrong. We will check it against the source and correct or remove it where the point is made out.