Coronavirus – Call Outs to Supermarkets (6A/20)
Request
1. From December 2019 to the most recent date, how many times have police been called to supermarkets to assist and deal with matters related to coronavirus, e.g. panic buying, long queues, etc. Could I please have the dates and location.
2. In relation to Q1, how many arrests have been made or cautions given at the supermarkets and the reasons for them, e.g. anti-social behaviour. Could I please have dates and location.
3. In relation to Q1, the costs associated with officer attendance.
Response
Please be advised that the information that you have requested is not available in a readily retrievable format. This is because there are no markers on our systems that would enable us to identify incidents relating to coronavirus. Similarly, our incident database does not have a location marker. Therefore, to ascertain whether any relevant information is held, we would firstly have to retrieve all incident records from December 2019 and manually review each one to identify if the location of the incident / offence was a supermarket and then further establish if the underlying reason for the offence was related to the coronavirus outbreak. Furthermore, the costs associated with officer attendance would not be separately recorded.
This means that the cost of providing you with the information is above the amount to which we are legally required to respond i.e. the cost of locating and retrieving the information exceeds the ‘appropriate level’ as stated in the Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004.
In accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000, this letter acts as a Refusal Notice for this request.
Unfortunately, due to the reasons outlined above, 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.
Further information on section 12 of FOI is available here:
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