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Drink spiking / Injections (1584A/21)

Request

Q1: Could you tell me the number of drink spiking offences and spiking offences via injection that were recorded in the following time periods:

  • The 12 months to November 1, 2021 (1/11/2020 to 1/11/2021)
  • The 12 months to November 1, 2020 (1/11/2019 to 1/11/2020)
  • The 12 months to November 1, 2019 (1/11/2018 to 1/11/2019)
  • The 12 months to November 1, 2018 (1/11/2017 to 1/11/2018)
  • The 12 months to November 1, 2017 (1/11/2016 to 1 /11/2017)

 

If possible, for each time period, could you tell me the gender of the victims please?

Q2: I think these offences would be relevant:

– 008/02 10 (Administering poison with intent to injure or annoy)

– 088/05 (10 (Administering a substance with intent)

– 005/05 10 (Administering drug with intent to commit indictable offence)

Response

Please find enclosed our response.

Initially upon receipt of your original request the data you required was not in a retrievable format, so as a result we clarified with you and asked you to select the specific offences you desired.  However, since this last communication and now, a search has been developed which allows us to answer your original request.  So this FOI will answer all of the above request.

Keyword searches are notoriously unreliable, the reasons why searches using this method are not reliable include (but are not limited to) the following:-

  1. a) Searches rely on the keywords being spelt correctly with no grammatical errors
  2. b) Searches rely on the keywords actually being mentioned in the summary description of the record – if they are mentioned anywhere else within the record but not in the summary, then they will not feature in any results

However, I can confirm that the below data is based on several keyword searches and each incident data has been validated as being correct.

Q1: Could you tell me the number of drink spiking offences and spiking offences via injection that were recorded in the following time periods:

The 12 months to November 1, 2017 (1/11/2016 to 1 /11/2017)

 

 

Nov

2016

Dec 2016 Jan

2017

Feb

2017

Mar

2017

Apr

2017

May

2017

Jun

2017

Jul

2017

Aug

2017

Sep

2017

Oct

2017

1 1 0 1 5 6 3 2 3 3 2 3
Gender

 

Nov

2016

Dec

2016

Feb

2017

Mar

2017

Apr

2017

May

2017

Jun

2017

Jul

2017

Aug

2017

Sep

2017

Oct

2017

Female 1 1 1 3 2 2 2 2 1 2 2
Male 0 0 0 1 3 0 0 1 1 0 1
Not Specified 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0

 

No spiking by injection incidents were recorded during this period, it was all drink spiking.

 

 

The 12 months to November 1, 2018 (1/11/2017 to 1/11/2018)

 

Nov

2017

Dec

2017

Jan

2018

Feb

2018

Mar

2018

Apr

2018

May

2018

Jun

2018

Jul

2018

Aug

2018

Sep

2018

Oct

2018

4 7 2 4 4 10 7 5 4 5 8 7

 

 

Gender Nov

2017

Dec

2017

Jan

2018

Feb

2018

Mar

2018

Apr

2018

May

2018

Jun

2018

Jul

2018

Aug

2018

Sep

2018

Oct

2018

Female 2 1 1 2 2 4 6 2 3 1 3 3
Male 0 4 1 1 0 4 1 2 1 4 3 3
Not

Specified

1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

 

No spiking by injection incidents were recorded during this period, it was all drink spiking.

 

The 12 months to November 1, 2019 (1/11/2018 to 1/11/2019)

 

Nov

2018

Dec

2018

Jan

2019

Feb

2019

Mar

2019

Apr

2019

May

2019

Jun

2019

Jul

2019

Aug

2019

Sep

2019

Oct

2019

3 7 8 2 5 11 3 11 6 11 7 6

 

Gender Nov

2018

Dec

2018

Jan

2019

Feb

2019

Mar

2019

Apr

2019

May

2019

Jun

2019

Jul

2019

Aug

2019

Sep

2019

Oct

2019

Not

Specified

3 6 4 0 1 7 2 3 2 3 4 2
Female 0 1 4 1 4 3 0 7 3 5 1 1
Male 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 1 1 2 2 3

 

No spiking by injection incidents were recorded during this period, it was all drink spiking.

 

The 12 months to November 1, 2020 (1/11/2019 to 1/11/2020)

 

Nov

2019

Dec

2019

Jan

2020

Feb

2020

Mar

2020

Apr

2020

Jun

2020

Jul

2020

Aug

2020

Sep

2020

Oct

2020

11 2 14 9 8 3 6 8 9 6 3

 

Gender Nov

2019

Dec

2019

Jan

2020

Feb

2020

Mar

2020

Apr

2020

Jun

2020

Jul

2020

Aug

2020

Sep

2020

Oct

2020

Not Specified 4 2 3 7 8 1 3 2 0 2 1
Female 5 0 11 2 0 0 3 2 6 4 0
Male 2 0 0 0 0 2 0 4 3 0 2

 

No spiking by injection incidents were recorded during this period, it was all drink spiking.

The 12 months to November 1, 2021 (1/11/2020 to 1/11/2021)

 

Nov

2020

Dec

2020

Jan

2021

Feb

2021

Mar

2021

Apr

2021

May

2021

Jun

2021

Jul

2021

Aug

2021

Sep

2021

Oct

2021

6 8 4 1 5 6 13 11 20 18 31 67

 

Gender Nov

2020

Dec

2020

Jan

2021

Feb

2021

Mar

2021

Apr

2021

May

2021

Jun

2021

Jul

2021

Aug

2021

Sep

2021

Oct

2021

Not Specified 1 1 1 0 3 1 1 1 0 1 3 2
Female 5 3 1 0 2 1 7 6 17 9 21 53
Male 0 4 2 1 0 3 3 4 3 7 7 9

 

During this period, West Midlands Police recorded 8 incidents of spiking by injection all of which were reported to the Police Force between 24th and 31st October 2021.

Further all 8 incidents of spiking by injection had victims that were female by gender.

Q2:

 

– 008/02 10 (Administering poison with intent to injure or annoy)

– 088/05 (10 (Administering a substance with intent)

– 005/05 10 (Administering drug with intent to commit indictable offence)

Drink spiking is not typically recorded as these offence codes, they are more commonly recorded as assaults, hence the low figures.  However, the figures for the above offences are:

Administer a poison with intent = 1 in Feb 2017, 3 in Dec 2017

Administer a substance with intent = 1 in July 2018

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.

 

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