Metal Thefts (1114A/20)
Request
1) Please provide a breakdown by month of reported metal thefts for the periods January 1 2019 to December 31 2019 and January 1 2020 to current date.
2) Please provide a breakdown of thefts for these periods by whether they relate to infrastructure or non-infrastructure.
3) Please provide a further breakdown if available on the type of metal stolen (e.g. copper, lead) and the target of the theft (e.g. vehicle, church, commercial building etc).
Response
Please find attached our response.
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.