Dog thefts (140A/21)
Request
- The total number of dog theft crime reports made in 2015/2016/2017/2018/2019/2020/2021, broken down by month and year.
- All individual dog theft crime reports made in 2015/2016/2017/2018/2019/2020/2021, one per line.
Response
Under section 21 of the Act, we are not required to provide information in response to a request if it is already reasonably accessible to you. The information you requested is available on the following website.
http://foi.west-midlands.police.uk/
There are numerous published dog theft reports on this site however after researching, the one to search for that covers all the dog thefts year by year into months is:
636A_20 for years 2015; 2016; 2017; 2018; 2019
1287A/20 for 2020 figures
2021 figures from 1st Jan 2021 to 28th Jan 2021 = 4 thefts in total
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).
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 enclosed) I this is helpful, but it does not affect our legal right to rely on the fees regulations for the remainder of the request.
In relation to Q2. All individual dog theft crime reports made in 2015/ 2016/ 2017/ 2018/ 2019/ 2020/ 2021, one per line. There are over 130 records. In order to retrieve he details of these individual thefts would mean accessing each record and evaluating it into one sentence this would take approximately 20 mins per record. This exceeds the time limit of 18 hours in regard to the Freedom of Information Act.