FOI 1024-2024 / Nov 2024 / Mobile phone thefts

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO: 1024-2024

I write in connection with your request for information which was received on 21^st November 2024 as follows:

I am writing to you under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to request the following information:

The total number of mobile phone thefts from a person received in the three years set out below (November to October):

The total number mobile phones reported stolen in theft from a person received in the three years set out below (November to October):

The total number of mobile phones recovered by the police following thefts from a person in the three years set out below (November to October):

Response: Please be advised that the requested information is not centrally recorded and is therefore not held in a readily retrievable format.  There is no offence of ‘theft of mobile phone’ and no way of readily identifying from the Crime Recording System where this has occurred in relation to an offence.  Keyword searches are not carried out routinely as they are not reliable, they will only bring back records where the chosen keyword(s) is present within the MO Description / Incident Summary of an investigation, these are limited free text fields and do not contain all information in relation to an investigation.  Therefore, in order to determine the information requested, it would be necessary to manually review each and every offence of theft, burglary, and robbery recorded during the specified periods.  I can advise that an analyst has conducted a search for all offences, recorded just for a 12 month period, where a mobile phone could feasibly have be reported stolen, and this returned over 9,400 crimes.  At a conservative estimate of 2 minutes per record to review and collate this information, this would equate to in excess of 300 hours of work for a 12 month period alone, and this figure would likely apply to each year of the specified time period.

Therefore, searches would exceed the amount 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 up to 18 hours of work on one request.

In accordance with Section 12(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, this letter acts as a Refusal Notice for your 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 that 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.  Even if we were to look at theft from person offences only to answer Q2, this would still exceed the fees limit for the time period due to the number of offences which would need to be reviewed on an individual basis.

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

[email protected]