Operation Shield

“Operation Shield is an initiative led by British Transport Police, where security scanners are to be deployed at major railway stations with the aim of discouraging criminal activity on the rail network” according to Wikipedia.  Pretty neat eh? It does have its critics, but this is where the FoI comes in handy.  We can see if these criticisms are justified and IF they are true or not.

A direct assault on the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime for details of Operation Shield didn't get everything that was needed. It did give a lot of details of the communication plan and a few other details, but does show some of the ways that this programme is working. We can also see that the Mayor’s Office showed some of the links to the equality programme  (These links are now dead but still stated for clarity) but after a lot of back and forth, no further information.

So what about the individual London Boroughs? Well here are some of the responses; Lambeth Borough Council showed some of their meetings and their minutes of operation shield. They have also released some of the minutes of their reflections report.  Again, it shows some accountability and shows that people can get some of the information. Again it also shows that we can access the information and figure out what is going on.

This operation has been accused of racism but there has been a lot of correspondence with Errol Patterson the African Caribbean Community Liaison Officer at Lambeth MPS which we have got to look at (Look towards the bottom of the request, because there is a few other people who they have given details for). Also the City of Westminster showed how many people they have auditing their system.  The City of Westminster also released their agendas and minutes about operation shield. That's pretty good accountability.

Did you know that the Department for Work and Pensions had a role in operation shield?  I didn't either until I read this.  After reading the request it shows that there have been meeting made about this issue but nothing much more.  Part of it was refused due to personal information being released; which is still pretty good to know. The CPS gave some of the details of how they prosecute cases relating to operation shield, but it is very limited what they stated.

SO what have we learnt?  There is a lot of information out there about this matter and a lot of people trying to find out more. This is only the iceberg, with regards to Operation Shield.  There is plenty more issues that we could cover , the main thing that we can see is that there is a lot of information that we can scrutinise everything and we can find the paper trail that has been generated.  See, the FoI act helps us to understand and find out what we are thinking!