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Car Stripping (169A/23)

Request

Please can you let me know how many reports of car stripping have been made to the WM Police Force in 2021, 2022 and 2023 to date? By car stripping I mean vandals / criminals removing body parts from a car without the owner’s consent.

How many of these cases have been solved?

Response

Our data are not organised in such a way as to allow us to provide this information within the appropriate (cost) limit within the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act (see ‘Reason for Decision’ below).

Car stripping is not a specific criminal offence, it can be recorded in many different ways, but mainly as theft, or criminal damage.  Theft or criminal damage can be related to any object for example, a phone, a building, the list is endless and within this data is the theft of car parts, for example a wheel or an engine. This information is not held in a retrievable / searchable format. We can locate all thefts and criminal damages, but we cannot drill down into what was taken and what was damaged without examining each record.

There are thousands of thefts and criminal damages reported every year, and to locate and retrieve this information would require an individual search of each record.  This will exceed the time limit of 18 hours for the purpose of the FOI Act.

I am unable to suggest any practical way in which your request may be modified in order to satisfy your query or bring it within the 18 hours stipulated by the Regulations. I am however willing to consider any refinements that you are able to make to your request, in accordance with Section 16 of the Freedom of Information Act.  If you would like to look into refining your request please contact me.

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