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:
- How many incidents have been reported to your force of thefts being carried out in Churches or on church property from January 2017-to as close to present as possible? a, If possible please could you clarify how many of the thefts recorded relate to lead being taken from the church roof?
- How many incidents have been reported to your force of vandalism being carried out on Churches/ church property from January 2017-to as close to present as possible?
3 How many incidents have been reported to your force of physical/ violent assaults being carried out in Churches or on church property from 2017-to as close to present as possible?
In Response:
I am able to disclose the located information to you as attached and research was made via the below methodology .
All crimes where the location has been recorded as "church", "church hall" or "churchyard" created between 01/01/2017 and 31/07/2019 have been identified.
For Q1 - Home Office classifications Burglary and Theft and Handling stolen goods is included. Theft and Handling stolen goods are broken down by categories. Please note this will also include any thefts from a person/theft of or from a vehicle which took place inside the church or the church grounds.
For Q2 - data has been manually reviewed to identify anywhere lead has been stolen.
For Q3 - I have included Home Office classification Violence against the person which I have broken down by categories as it also includes harassment offences.
2019 data up to July 2019
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 the above noted please see the attached.
