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FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO: FOI-236-2024
I write in connection with your request for information which was received on 22nd February 2024 as follows:
Specifically, I would like to request the following information for each of the following time periods:
January 2018 – December 2018
January 2019 – December 2019
January 2020 – December 2020
January 2021 – December 2021
January 2022 – December 2022
January 2023 – December 2023
January 2024 – February 2024 (most recent available)
Question 1:
What is the total number of incidents reported involving the misuse of drones per year?
Question 2:
How many incidents of drone misuse were reported to have been used for the purpose of crimes such as stalking, harassment, voyeurism per year?
Question 3:
Are there any patterns identified in these incidents;
Question 4:
Is there any guidance, policies, or initiatives implemented by your force to tackle the misuse of drones for stalking or harassment?
Question 5:
Lastly we would be interested to know if you have an officer available for interview on the data you provide and whether or not it is possible to film with any victims and/or the police drone unit.
Please find the Warwickshire Police response set out below.
Response: Please be advised that the information at Q2 (and therefore Q3) is not centrally recorded and is therefore not held in a readily retrievable format. There is no specific identifier for ‘drone’ within the Crime Recording System, and no flag or marker to easily identify when this has occurred in relation to an offence. In order to provide an accurate response it would be necessary to review the wider investigation papers in relation to each and every offence of stalking, harassment and voyeurism, recorded during the stated period. As you will appreciate, this would take an inordinate amount of time and would exceed 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 up to 18 hours of work on one request.
In accordance with Section 12(2) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, please treat this letter as the Refusal Notice I am required to provide to you in respect of your request. Please note that if one part of a request exceeds the fees limit, then Section 12 applies to the whole request.
In accordance with Section 16 of the Act, I have a duty to provide advice and assistance; however, due to the volume of records which would need to be individually reviewed, I am unable to suggest a way to reduce your request into one which could be managed within the fees limit for this element of your request.
With regard to the remainder of your request, I can advise that it may be possible to provide information for Q1 based on a keyword search of the Command and Control System for incidents containing the keyword ‘Drone’ and/or ‘UAV’ during the stated periods. The resulting records would then need to be reviewed for relevance. However, it is important to note that, should there be relevant incidents, but where none of the stated keywords had been mentioned, then these would not be captured within the response. For this reason, any information received by way of a keyword search cannot be assumed to be accurate and should be treated with caution. Further, it should also be noted that in the event that the search brings back an excessive amount of records, it may again exceed the fees limit to determine relevance (ie if they relate to misuse of a drone, rather than, for example, someone reporting a theft of a drone).
Should you wish to resubmit your request for information in relation to Q1 and Q4 only then this may be possible.
As a gesture of goodwill and outside of the Act, I can advise that is not valid under the Freedom of information Act 2000 (“the Act”) as it does not fulfil the requirement of Section 8, in that it is not a request for specific recorded information held. Please be advised that the Act only extends to requests for recorded information and does not require public authorities to answer questions if this would mean creating new information, or giving an opinion or judgement that is not already recorded.
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