Provision of information held by Northumbria Police made under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the 'Act')
As you may be aware the purpose of the Act is to allow a general right of access to information held at the time of a request, by a Public Authority (including the Police), subject to certain limitations and exemptions.
You asked:
1. Please state the number of offence records listed in your crime database that contain each of the following phrases: "smart device"; "smart TV"; "smart home"; "Alexa"; "Google Home"; "Nest" (thermostat).
Please identify these by conducting a free text search of your crime database, and provide information for each of the last five years (starting January 1 2014), and the current year to August 31.
2. Please provide a breakdown of the kind of offences recorded that contain these keywords.
3. Please provide an anonymised copy of the crime report for each incident recorded. If this is too onerous, please focus on areas around domestic abuse and stalking.
In Response:
We have now had the opportunity to fully consider your request and I provide a response for your attention.
Following receipt of your request, searches were conducted with the Corporate Development Department Northumbria Police. I can confirm that the information you have requested is held, in part, by Northumbria Police.
I am able to disclose the located information to you as follows.
Please note that searches of the crime MO for the key words specified above have been conducted. As with any keyword search, the search will only return exact matches within the Crime MO, this does not account for differences in terminology and/or spelling used. Also, we are unable to search the crime investigation screens/additional information screens, if the terms are not used within the MO the crime will not be identified.
1.
2014 |
2015 |
2016 |
2017 |
2018 |
2019* |
|
Smart device |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
Smart TV |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
1 |
Smart home |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
Alexa |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
1 |
Google Home |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
Nest |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
2.
2014 |
2015 |
2016 |
2017 |
2018 |
2019* |
|
Burglary dwelling |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
1 |
Other theft and handling |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
1 |
3. Unknown offender approach rear garden of dwelling unseen offender then proceed to use a drill commence tidy search and steal amazon alexa from upstairs landing before leaving via back door that had been drilled.
Victim states that virgin media engineer attended address in order to install tv services; as arranged; noticed that existing smart tv box was missing.