Islamophobic Hate Crime (1979/20)
Request
Please could you provide me with the number of racially aggravated hate crime, specifically Islamophobic, for the following dates:
- June, July, August 2005
- April, May, June 2013
- November, December, January 2015-16
- Also is there any strategy West Midlands Police has in place to protect Muslims after an Islamist-inspired terror attack takes place?
Response
West Midlands Police 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 (1979-attachment). 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.
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.