Acid Attacks / Corrosive Fluid Offences (1434A/23)
Request
- I would like to request the number of offences that were categorised as an acid attack or corrosive fluid offence in the West Midlands area between 1st January 2020 and 31st December 2020 inclusive.
- The percentage and or number of said offences mentioned in 1. that were recorded as Violent Offences within the category ‘Violence Against the Person’.
- The age and gender of victims of the said Violent Offences mentioned in 2.
Response
I can confirm that this information is held by West Midlands Police. However, while the majority of the information is attached (1434A_23_attachment.pdf) I am withholding the ages and genders for two of the nine victims in question 3, since they are exempt by virtue of Section 40(2) – Personal information.
Details of this exemption can be found here: https://www.college.police.uk/app/information-management/freedom-information#foia-section-40-personal-information
Section 40(2) is an absolute and class-based exemption if to release the information would breach the third party’s data protection rights. I believe that disclosure of the redacted detail would contravene Part (a) of the Data Protection Principles, in that Personal Data shall be: “processed lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner in relation to individuals (‘lawfulness, fairness and transparency’)”. As this exemption is class-based I am not required to identify the harm in disclosure and in this instance, I believe that 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.