FOI 485-2023 / May 2023 / Urine Tests & Drink Spiking
FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO: 485-2023
I write in connection with your request for information which was received on 5th May 2023 as follows:
Q1. How many men and women have taken a urine test after reporting that they have had their drink spiked between January 1st, 2021, to 30th November 2022?
Q2. Please can you specify the age of these men and women who have reported this specific crime and have taken a urine test to check if they have had their drink spiked?
On 9th May 2023 you requested additional information as follows:
I would like to add another question to my request:
Q3. Please can you confirm out of these men and women who have taken a urine test, how many actually showed that they had their drink spiked?
Please find the Warwickshire Police response set out below.
Response: Please be advised that there is no specific offence of ‘spiking’, and no flag or marker within the crime recording system to easily identify when this is relevant to an offence. In order to attempt to accurately determine the number of offences where this could be a factor, it would be necessary to individually examine all crimes recorded during the stated period. This would take an inordinate amount of time, which would undoubtedly exceed the limit to which we are legally required to respond, i.e., the cost of locating and retrieving the information exceeds the ‘appropriate level’, as stated in the Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004. For Police forces in the UK, the "appropriate limit" is considered to be up to 18 hours of work on one request.
In accordance with section 12(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, this letter is a Refusal Notice for this request.
In order to provide assistance, the business area has conducted a keyword search for all offences, recorded between 1st January 2021 and 30th November 2022, where the words ‘spike’, ‘spiked’ or ‘spiking’, appear within the MO Description field. The resulting records have been reviewed to check for relevance, and to remove false positives, such as ‘spiked hair’ etc. However, it is important to note that, in the event there are relevant offences recorded, but where the keywords are not present within the MO description, then these will not have been returned within the search. For this reason, information retrieved by way of a keyword search cannot be assumed to be entirely accurate.
|
Crime MO's containing keywords Spike, Spiked, Spiking |
|
|
Year – Crime recorded |
Total |
|
2021 |
38 |
|
2022 up to 30/11/2022 |
42 |
|
Grand Total |
80 |
The above crimes were then manually reviewed for specific mention of keywords drink, drinking, drinks, i.e., believes drink was spiked’, in the MO description field.
The resulting positive records were then further interrogated for any mention of a urine test.
As a gesture of goodwill, responses to Q1, Q2 and Q3 have been provided below, based on these results. Please note that this data was located before it was realised that not all of the information could be retrieved within the fees limit and should not be taken as a precedent that additional information would be supplied outside of the time/fees legislation for any subsequent requests.
|
Urine tests |
Total |
|
Male |
0 |
|
Female |
6 |
|
Grand total |
6 |
|
Age group |
Total |
|
18 to 30 |
3 |
|
31 to 50 |
3 |
|
Grand total |
6 |
|
Results |
Total |
|
Positive for spiking |
0 |
|
Negative for spiking |
6 |
|
Grand total |
6 |
Every effort has been made to ensure that the information provided is as accurate as possible.
Your attention is drawn to the below which details your right of complaint.
Should you have any further enquiries concerning this matter, please write or email the Freedom of Information Unit quoting the reference number above.
Yours sincerely
Freedom of Information Officer
Freedom of Information Unit
Warwickshire Police
PO Box 4
Leek Wootton
Warwickshire
CV35 7QB