Assault Emergency Worker (200A/20)
Request
ORIGINAL REQUEST
I would like to know how many offences have been recorded where an individual was spat or coughed at, during the following three periods of time?
- Monday 25th March 2019 – Sunday 19th May 2019 2. Monday 27th January
2020 – Sunday 22nd March 2020 3. Monday 23rd March 2020 – Sunday 17th May
2020
If possible, please break down the data to include following details (if you are unable to provide any of the following due to time or cost constraints please proceed with whatever information you can provide.)
– The date and location of the assault.
– Whether the victim was a police officer or emergency services worker.
– Whether also included in the attack was a ‘direct threat’ of Covid-19 (this is obviously only relevant in the second two time periods.)
– Whether there was an arrest and charge and if so, the age and sex of the
person(s) involved.
AMENDED REQUEST
Offences of Assault On Emergency Workers with a key word search for spat / spit and cough.
Response
Please find attached our response. Please note: as previously advised this search was likely to include offences that are unrelated to Covid 19.
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.