Press and media
We publish per-force figures on police complaints, stop and search and deaths following police contact, computed from official data. Journalists can use any of it, including cuts we have not published. We do not charge for it.
Contact
Lawrence Sykes, Co-Founder, PoliceComplaint.com
info@policecomplaint.com
— put “Press” in the subject line.
If you are on deadline, say so in the subject line and give the time you need it by. We would rather send you the working than have a figure reported without its denominator.
It is also why the method, the limitations and the source files are all public. You do not have to trust us: every figure carries its numerator, its denominator and its source, the CSVs are downloadable under a licence that permits reuse, and you can reproduce or contradict any number here without asking us. If you find one that is wrong, tell us and we will correct it on the page and say that we did.
There is a local story behind every national figure
The national numbers are averages over forces that differ enormously, so the interesting story is almost always the local one. Some examples that are already computed and sourced on this site, each with its workings available:
- Which force has the highest share of complaint outcomes overturned on review, and how far it sits from its neighbours
- Where recorded stop and search most diverges from the resident population, and which forces record ethnicity too poorly for the question to be answerable at all
- Which forces have seen the steepest rise in recorded use of force over five years, and which have fallen
- How deaths during or following police contact break down by force and category across a twenty-one year series
Ask for your patch and we will send the force-level cut, the denominator and the source file. We would rather do that than have a number used without its base.
What we can give you
- Per-force figures for England and Wales. Complaint review outcomes, stop and search by recorded ethnicity against Census 2021 denominators, use of force, and deaths following police contact.
- A cut for your area. Every figure exists at force level, so there is a local number behind every national one. Ask for your patch.
- The workings. The source file, the period, the denominator and the code path that produced any figure on this site.
- United States and Australia. Police killings by state and by department 2013–2026 including whether an officer was charged, and Australian complaints and deaths in custody by state.
The open dataset
Everything behind this site is published as CSVs under CC BY 4.0 with a citable DOI, so you can check us rather than take our word for it.
The datasets On GitHub Cite it: 10.5281/zenodo.22165476
- A disparity ratio is not proof of discrimination. It is a measured difference in outcomes. It does not establish a cause.
- Stop and search ethnicity is recorded by the officer; Census ethnicity is self-defined. The two are not the same basis. Officers barely record “Mixed” — 0.5% of searches against 2.9% of residents — so the direction of the disparity is solid but the magnitude is uncertain.
- A recorded complaint is an allegation, not a finding. A force that records complaints readily logs more of them.
Corrections
If we get something wrong we correct it and say so on the page. We have done it before and we will publish the correction rather than quietly change the number — the open dataset carries its own correction notes. If you think a figure here is wrong, tell us and we will check it against the source.
Who we are
PoliceComplaint.com is published by Copious Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 11437826. We are not a law firm, a police force or an oversight body. We are a commercial site: we publish this data openly and we also help people who believe they have been wronged by the police find out what they can do about it. We would rather tell you that than have you find it out. Who runs the company is on the team page.