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Grooming - 752/19

Date Responded 02 July 2019

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. How many reports of grooming did you receive in 2008 in which the keywords Xbox, PlayStation, Fortnite or Call of Duty were mentioned?
  2. How many reports of grooming did you receive in 2013 in which the keywords Xbox, PlayStation, Fortnite or Call of Duty were mentioned?
  3. How many reports of grooming did you receive in 2018 in which the keywords Xbox, PlayStation, Fortnite or Call of Duty were mentioned?

In Response:

I am able to disclose the located information to you as follows.

The data has been taken from the central database where the HO code was for the following offences:

Meeting a female child following sexual grooming etc. - offender 18 or over and victim under 16

Meeting a male child following sexual grooming etc. - offender 18 or over and victim under 16

and the keywords 'xbox', 'playstation', 'fortnite' or 'call of duty' were in the MO.

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 cannot search the crime investigation screens/additional information screens, if the terms are not used within the MO the crime will not be identified.

If you decide to write an article/use the enclosed data we would expect that you to take into consideration the factors highlighted above so as not to mislead members of the public or official bodies or misrepresent the relevance of the whole or any part of this disclosed material.

With all the above noted please see the retrieved stats below.

2008 – 0

2013 – 1

2018 – 1

Disclaimer

Due to the different methods of recording information across 43 forces, a specific response from one constabulary should not be seen as an indication of what information could be supplied (within cost) by another. Systems used for recording these figures are not generic, nor are the procedures used locally in capturing the data. For this reason responses between forces may differ, and should not be used for comparative purposes.

The information we have supplied to you is likely to contain intellectual property rights of Northumbria Police. Your use of the information must be strictly in accordance with the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 (as amended) or such other applicable legislation. In particular, you must not re-use this information for any commercial purpose.

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