Crimes Involving ‘Muzmatch’ (344A/21)
Request
1) Please provide a copy of all modus operandi free text crime reports (or your force equivalent) containing the following keywords:
‘Muzmatch’
From 1st April 2020 to 28th February 2021. If this hits the cost limit, please provide the most recent 200 reports.
2) For each of the last five years, for crimes recorded that contain the keyword ‘Muzmatch’, please provide:
2a) The total number of offences
2b) A breakdown of this number by Home Office offence code (lowest level, not just overall crime category such as sexual offences but rape of a female over 16)
2c) A breakdown by this number by outcome code (charged, postal summons, no suspect identified, evidential difficulties etc.)
Response
We can confirm that some relevant information is held by West Midlands Police. However, while the majority of the information is attached to this email, I am not required to release all of the information requested. As requested we have conducted a keyword search of the MO note field of our Crimes database for the term ‘Muzmatch’; please find this attached and note the redactions are shown as white spaces.
REASONS FOR DECISION
The redacted information is exempt by virtue of the following exemptions:
Section 30(1) – Investigations
Section 40(2) – Personal Information
These exemptions and explanatory notes are shown here:
In line with Section 30, I am required to complete a Prejudice Test/Public Interest Test (PIT) on disclosure. Please find this PIT attached (344A_PIT).
Section 40(2) allows for personal data to be withheld where release would breach the third party’s data protection rights. It would be unfair to release this information where any person could be identified from the data and in this case the right to privacy outweighs any public interest in release.
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.
If you decide to write an article / use the enclosed data we would ask you to take into consideration the factors highlighted in this document so as to not mislead members of the public or official bodies, or misrepresent the relevance of the whole or any part of this disclosed material.