Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV’s) (1671A/23)
Request
I am writing to request the following information from West Midlands Police about the use and deployment of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV’s).
Please may you provide me with answers to the following:
- Do you use UAV’s at crime scenes? If so what type of scenes, Arson, missing persons, etc. and how many times have they been used in the last two years?
- Do you use your own UAV’s or subcontract UAV services from an outside body/Police force? If so which company/body do you use and what type of UAV?
- Have you ever used UAV’s to help search for clandestine graves or missing persons?
- How many staff do you have trained to deploy a UAV? What has been the cost of staff training?
- Are your UAV operators police officers or staff?
- If the answer is yes to any of the above what has been the approx. cost internally and externally?
Response
Please find attached (1671A_23_attachment.pdf).
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.