FOI 948-2024 / Oct 2024 / Delivery drivers
FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO: 948-2024
I write in connection with your request for information which was received on 29th October 2024 as follows:
I am making this request for information about crimes against delivery drivers under the Freedom of Information Act.
- How many crimes have been recorded where the victim's occupation was logged as 'Courier', 'Deliveryman', 'Delivery driver' or 'van delivery agent' between 2019 and 2024? Please note that if you do not use these specific terms, I am satisfied with any results where the victim is stated as being a delivery worker.
Please break the results down by:
1a) Month (e.g. January 2019, February 2019, etc).
1b) Victim occupation term
1c) The crime committed (for example: robbery, violence with injury, violence without injury, etc.)
1d) Location
- In how many of these cases was a suspect arrested? Please again break this down by the categories stated above.
- If possible and within the time and cost limit afforded to a search, please provide the incident report for each case.
Please find the Warwickshire Police response set out below.
Response: Please be advised that the requested information is not available in a readily retrievable format. Although there is an occupation field within the Crime Recording System, this is a drop-down field with limited choice, is not mandatory and is often not completed. Further, if the field has been completed it is not linked to an individual crime, but to a person, and can be added to at any time. Previous information is kept on the person record when new occupation details are added. Therefore, a search for individuals with a specific occupation type would return all records in relation to that individual, regardless of when the occupation was recorded or whether it had subsequently changed. Even if relevant occupations were returned in any given search, it would be necessary to determine, in each case, whether the occupation was relevant to the specific crime in question and, in the event that an individual had been both a victim and a suspect of crime at different times, it would be necessary to determine which role was relevant to an offence. For these reasons, the occupation field is not a reliable search option. In order to determine whether reference is made to a crime where the victim is shown as having any of the listed occupations within your request, it would be necessary to individually review the wider investigation documentation for each and every crime recorded during the stated period. As you will appreciate, this would involve an inordinate amount of work which would excessively 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 (£450) of work on one request.
Please further note, that even if we were to limit the search to records where the occupation field has been completed (albeit that the field is not mandatory and information could not be considered accurate), for the reasons set out above it would still be necessary to individually examine each and every one to determine whether the occupation is relevant to an individual being a victim and relevant to a crime recorded during the stated period. Given the wide scope of your request, which relates to any crime, the amount of records returned would still be likely to considerably exceed the fees limit.
In accordance with section 12(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, this letter acts as a Refusal Notice for this part of the request.
Under Section 16 of the Act, I have a duty to provide advice and assistance; however, given the amount of work involved, I am unable to suggest a way that you could reasonably revise your request into one which could be handled within the time allowed.
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