Assaults at Burger King Restaurants (1181A/23)
Request
1) Please state how many of the following crimes were alleged to have occurred and recorded by your force as happening inside Burger King restaurants in the financial year 2022/23. Assault offences to include all assault offences:
5D – Assault with intent to cause serious harm
8N – Assault with injury
8P – Racially or religiously aggravated assault with injury
105A – Assault without injury
105B – Racially or religiously aggravated assault without injury
Please note I am only interested in assaults which occurred inside the restaurants’ premises.
To clarify, an assault that was recorded as having happened ‘down the road from’ a Burger King would not be of interest, although one that happened inside the restaurant or at least in the doorway/entrance would be.
2) In addition, please state the addresses of the THREE Burger King restaurants in your police force area with the most alleged/recorded assault offences in 2022/23, stating how many occurred for each one.
3) Finally, please provide me with a verbatim copy of the “investigation summary field” and/or the modus operandi (MO) for the FIVE most recent cases recorded for each of the top three Burger King locations.
Response
We can confirm that relevant information is held by West Midlands Police. However, while majority of the information is attached to this email, I am not required to release all of the information requested. Please find attached our response with redactions where appropriate (1181A_Attachment).
REASONS FOR DECISION
The redacted information is exempt by virtue of the following exemptions:
Section 30(1) – Investigations and proceedings
Section 40(2) – Personal information
These exemptions and explanatory notes are shown here:
In line with the above, I am required to complete a Prejudice Test/Public Interest Test (PIT) on disclosure. Please find this PIT attached (1181A_PIT).
Section 40(2) is an absolute and class-based exemption, therefore there is no requirement to provide evidence of harm or consider the public interest test. To disclose all of the requested information would significantly increase the risk of individuals being identified which would breach principle 1 (lawfulness, fairness and transparency) of the Data Protection Act 2018.