Social media crime - 405/20

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 complaints about crimes related to social media have been reported in the last three years? Please could you provide a breakdown of the type of crime.
2. How many times have officers been called out to deal with a social media related crime in the last three years? Please could you provide a breakdown of the type of crime.
3. How many people have been charged for a social media related crime in the last three years?
4. How many drink spiking cases have been recorded in the last three years?

Please note, social media includes: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube.

 

In Response:

Following receipt of your request, searches were conducted with the Corporate Development Department of Northumbria Police. I can confirm that the information you have requested is held by Northumbria Police.

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

This data has been taken from the central database. The queries have been defined as follows:

Q1 has been defined as a count of crimes wherein one of the search terms (below) has been noted.

Q2 has been defined as any case identified in Q1 wherein an officer attended.

Q3 has been defined as any charge outcomes from the crimes identified in Q1.

These have been based on a keyword MO search based on the keywords provided on the initial FOI: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube.

The results of those searches are as follows.

1,

	Year - Count of Crimes
Type of Crime	2017	2018	2019
Burglary	1	2	5
Criminal Damage	66	61	51
Drugs	2
Non Crime	57	69	111
Other Offences	355	566	528
Robbery		2	1
Sexual Offences	170	251	332
Theft & Handling Stolen Goods	19	24	38
Violence Against the Person	1992	2284	2581
Total	2662	3259	3647

 

2.

	Year - Count of Callouts
Type of Crime	2017	2018	2019
Burglary	1	2	1
Criminal Damage	60	56	33
Drugs	1
Non Crime	48	36	28
Other Offences	313	491	308
Robbery		2	1
Sexual Offences	155	220	238
Theft & Handling Stolen Goods	13	14	5
Violence Against the Person	1783	2050	1394
Grand Total	2374	2871	2008

 

3.

Year	2017	2018	2019
Charges	136	135	138

 

4.

With regards to information at this point from 2017 up to 20/09/19 the following exemption is applicable.

As the information you have requested is accessible by other means I have not provided you with a copy of the information and will rely on Section 21 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.  You should therefore consider this a refusal for your request.

I have provided an explanation to this exemption below.

Section 21 (1) - Information accessible by other means

Information which is reasonably accessible to the applicant is exempt information.

This information has been asked for previously, disclosed and is published on the Northumbria Police Disclosure Log.  FOI 1168/19 refers and the link to the Log is provided below.

With regards to data from 21/09/2019 - 31/09/2019 I can advise there were a further 6 cases reported in that time.