Murder (3976/20)
Request
Please can you provide me with data of murders in your police force over the last 10 years (2010-2020 or to the most recent available data). In financial or calendar years, however this information is held.
Broken down by:
- Solved or unsolved – Please include the last outcome category given, and if there are any other status that would be indicative of solved/unsolved crime (e.g. ‘Filed no suspect, no further enquiries’, etc).
For each of these murders please provide:
- Victim’s ethnicity (established, self-defined or ethnic appearance).
- Victim’s gender, nationality and age group.
- Offender/Principal suspect ethnicity, gender and nationality.
- Motivation or circumstance of crime (if known) and relationship between offender/principal suspect and victim.
Response
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 attached). 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.
REASON FOR DECISION
Please note that researching each individual case would exceed the appropriate limit (FOIA, s.12). We do not record offender nationality or the motivation of a crime, the date provided is the only data we have available.
The cost of compliance with the whole of your request is above the amount to which we are legally required to respond, i.e. the cost of locating and retrieving the information would exceed the appropriate costs limit under section 12(1) of the FOI Act 2000. For West Midlands Police, the appropriate limit is set at £450, as prescribed by the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004, S.I. 3244.
Attachments
3976_ATTACHMENT_09_2011 3976_ATTACHMENT_10_2010 3976_ATTACHMENT_11_ETHNICITY 3976_ATTACHMENT_01_2019 3976_ATTACHMENT_02_2018 3976_ATTACHMENT_03_2017 3976_ATTACHMENT_04_2016 3976_ATTACHMENT_05_2015 3976_ATTACHMENT_06_2014 3976_ATTACHMENT_07_2013 3976_ATTACHMENT_08_2012