Car Theft Incidents (1098A/23)
Request
a) The number of car theft incidents reported to your force between 1 January 2023 and 30 June 2023;
b) The number of those incidents where a police officer arrived at the scene of the
CLARIFICATION
Please could I have the data relating to theft of a motor vehicle?
Response
Please find attached our response.
Please note that these data should be interpreted with caution. Comparing numbers of incidents/crimes can be misleading and does not necessarily indicate the likelihood of someone being a victim of crime. In addition, the number of incidents/crimes recorded in an area over a period of time can be influenced by a number of factors. Consequently statistics on incidents/crimes for one period may not necessarily be a good indicator of future incidents in that area.
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.
We take car crime very seriously, we do not underestimate the impact this crime has on people’s lives and are working hard to bring these offenders to justice.
We know the huge inconvenience of vehicle crime on your livelihoods and personal lives.
With the support of the public we can continue to tackle car crime and shut down chop shops which act as a market for car thieves.
We have a dedicated force vehicle crime task force which has seen significant results. Since April we’ve recovered over 600 stolen vehicles and have made 169 arrests for vehicle-related offences. We’ve also identified over 20 so called ‘chop shops’ who deal in stolen cars and car parts.