Dangerous Dogs (1176-1178A/21)
Request
REQUEST 1 – REF 1176A/21
In the overall department and within the Dangerous Dogs Unit over each of the years 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 (or the last period for which full information is held):
1. How many dogs were seized each year under the Dangerous Dogs Act?
2. What was the cost of kennelling these seized dogs each year?
3. How many of those seized dogs each year were dangerously out of control in a public space?
4. How many of those seized dogs were seized under Section 1 of the Dangerous Dogs Act, 1991 (DDA), breed-specific legislation each year?
REQUEST 2 – REF 1177A/21
In the overall department and within the Dangerous Dogs Unit over each of the years 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 (or the last period for which full information is held):
1. Of the dogs seized each year under Section 1, how many were released under the Interim Exemption Scheme?
2. Of the dogs seized under Section 1 each year, how many were put to sleep?
3. Is there a plan in place to introduce within the Crown Prosecution Service a dedicated court process which would deal specifically with dangerous dog cases and related crime? If so, by what date?
REQUEST 3 – REF 1178A/21
1. In each of the years 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020, how many incidents of dogs being dangerously out of control in a public place were there?
2. How many arrests were made related to organised crime in each of the years 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020?
3. How many of the aforementioned arrests lead to convictions?
Clarification – Questions 2 and 3 very much relate to dogs.
As you will see in the article that you can access through the link, below, the West Midlands Police reports to have increased the resource allocated to its dangerous dog unit, as that would also enable the police to detect “other criminal activity” as well.
“Chief Inspector Dawn Miskella said: “Nationally there has been a correlation between organised crime and dangerous dogs offences. ”
So, questions 2 and 3 are related to dogs, given that justification for increasing resource in the dog unit was said to be to help tackle organised crime (and other). Therefore questions 2 and 3 are to understand what the magnitude of that intended knock-on impact has indeed been on the detection and prosecution of organised crime, as a result of the allocation of additional resource to the Dangerous Dogs Unit.
https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/west-midlands-police-beef-up-14574756
Response
Our data are not organised in such a way as to allow us to provide all of this information within the appropriate (cost) limit within the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act (see ‘Reason for Decision’ below).
However, although excess cost removes the force’s obligations under the Freedom of Information Act, as a gesture of goodwill I have supplied information, relative to your request, retrieved before it was realised that the fees limit would be exceeded (see attached file). I trust this is helpful, but it does not affect our legal right to rely on the fees regulations for the remainder of the request.
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.