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Request:
I am writing to you under the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act 2000. Please see below a request for the following information relating to incidents involving the misuse of drones, specifically those reported as being used for stalking or harassing victims.
Given the growing accessibility and use of drones, understanding their misuse for such purposes is crucial for public safety and privacy concerns.
Specifically, I would like to request the following information for each of the following time periods:
January 2018 – December 2018
January 2019 – December 2019
January 2020 - December 2020
January 2021 – December 2021
January 2022 – December 2022
January 2023– December 2023
January 2024 – February 2024 (most recent available)
Q1. What is the total number of incidents reported involving the misuse of drones per year?
Q2. How many incidents of drone misuse were reported to have been used for the purpose of crimes such as stalking, harassment, voyeurism per year?
Q3. Are there any patterns identified in these incidents;
a) What is the nature of the harassment or stalking reported (e.g., surveillance, intimidation).
b) How many investigations were launched per year?
c) How many charges are filed per year?
d) How many convictions are obtained per year?
Q4. Is there any guidance, policies, or initiatives implemented by your force to tackle the misuse of drones for stalking or harassment?
Q5. Lastly we would be interested to know if you have an officer available for interview on the data you provide and whether or not it is possible to film with any victims and/or the police drone unit.
Response:
Extent of Searches to Locate Information
Following receipt of your request searches were conducted within North Yorkshire Police to locate relevant information.
Decision
I am not obliged to provide you with a response to your request pursuant to Section 12(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the Act). Please note that when one part of your request falls under Section 12, we are not obliged to review the rest of the questions and the whole request is therefore exempt.
Section 12(1) applies to your request as the cost of complying with your request is above the amount to which we are legally required to respond i.e. the cost of identifying and retrieving any relevant information exceeds the ‘appropriate level’ as stated in the Freedom of Information (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004.
Due to the nature of our recording systems the information requested, if held, is not in an easily retrievable format. Our information retrieval process generally relies on a computer ran report which captures any information recorded upon the surface of a record or within specified fields. Where relevant information is held deeper in the record, or outside of a specified field, a manual assessment is required to retrieve that information.
In order to retrieve the requested information, it would be necessary to manually review all stalking/harassment crimes for the period between 2018 to 2024, to ascertain if this related to the use of drones, which would mean reading through thousands of reports, which would exceed the time limit allowed under the Act.
Pursuant to Section 17(5) of the Freedom of Information Act this letter acts as a Refusal Notice.
Pursuant to Section 16 of the Act I am required to offer you advice and assistance with regarding to refining your request to within the ‘appropriate limit’ (time/cost limit). However, we may be able to provide you with the number of crimes related to stalking/harassment within a specified time frame, where key words are recorded in the MO Summary field related to drones, for example “drones” or “drone”. You would be required to provide a list of Key Words for us to search upon. However, the accuracy of these results rely on an Officer recording the specific words in the field and it is likely that further manual reads would be required in order to ensure the results fit to your request. If you wish to discuss this please do not hesitate to contact me.
Please note that systems used for recording information are not generic, nor are the procedures used locally in capturing the data. It should be noted therefore that this force’s response to your questions should not be used for comparison purposes with any other responses you may receive.