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Dog Theft (164A/23)

Request

Please can I request under the Freedom of Information Act:

1a) The number of dog thefts reported to your police force in the calendar year 2022, broken down by local policing district (or other geographical breakdown such as local authority)

1b) The number of individual dogs stolen (e.g. a report of two dogs being stolen would count as two) and a breakdown by breed where known

1c) Of the dog thefts reported that year, the number resulting in a charge or summons

2a) The number of dog thefts reported to your police force in the calendar year 2021, broken down by local policing district (or other geographical breakdown such as local authority)

2b) The number of individual dogs stolen and a breakdown by breed where known

2c) Of the dog thefts reported that year, the number resulting in a charge or summons

Response

Please find attached our response.

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.

Attachments

164A_ATTACHMENT_01