Machete / Acid Offences (82A/21)
Request
- For the months of November and December 2020 how many crimes were logged by your force where a machete was recorded as being an element in the offence? [Note: I would hope that this could be achieved by a computer search on the MO of crimes for the words “machete” or variants of the spelling to include “machette” and “machetes”.
- Please provide me with a table showing a breakdown of the crimes from Q.1 that are ‘linked’ to machete/s by its mention in the MO.
- Taking the month of December 2020 please provide me with copies of the first 5 MOs that mention machetes. [Note: To avoid falling into an exemption I am content for names, ages, geography or any other personal detail to be redacted].
- For the months of November and December 2020 how many crimes were logged by your force where acid was recorded as being an element in the offence? [Note: I would hope that this could be achieved by a computer search on the MO of crimes for the words “acid” or “acid-attack”.
- Please provide me with a table showing a breakdown of the crimes from Q.4 that are ‘linked’ to acid and acid attacks by its mention in the MO.
- Taking the month of December 2020 please provide me with copies of the first 5 MOs that mention acid. [Note: To avoid falling into an exemption I am content for names, ages, geography or any other personal detail to be redacted].
Response
Please find attached (82A_21_attachment.pdf). Please also be advised that anonymised crime reports (questions 3 and 6) would not be made available for offences as the Modus Operandis (MO) contain personal information and details pertaining to any relevant investigation and therefore exemptions would apply, the amount of redaction necessary to remove exempt information and anonymise any remaining information subsequently renders the information useless.
Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that these data have been extracted from a number of data sources used by forces for police purposes. The detail collected to respond specifically to your request is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large scale recording system. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when interpreting those data.
The figures provided therefore are our best interpretation of relevance of data to your request, but you should be aware that the collation of figures for ad hoc requests may have limitations and this should be taken into account when those data are used.