FOI Animal Abuse on Social Media (0434-2022/23)
Request
1) For the calendar year 2021, please tell me how many incidents and crimes of animal abuse* you have recorded in which one of the following social media sites was named in the MO and/or the Investigation Summary Field
- TikTok
- YouTube
*By animal abuse, I’m referring to any of the following:
Crime type
Causing, permitting or failing to prevent unnecessary suffering of protected animal 97/01
Carrying out, permitting, causing to be carried out or failing to prevent prohibited procedure on a protected animal 97/02
Removing or causing or permitting or failing to prevent removal of dog’s tail other than for medical treatment 97/03
Administration of poisons etc to a protected animal 97/04
Offences relating to animal fights 97/05
Intercourse with an animal by a male 88/3
Intercourse with an animal by a female 88/4
Possession of extreme pornographic images – person performing an act of intercourse or oral sex with an animal (dead or alive) 86/14
2) For each social media site, could you please give a sub-total of the number of times they were mentioned in the MO and/or Investigation Summary Field in an animal abuse incident or crime, broken down by Home Office Classification codes?
3) Finally, could you please provide me with copies of the MOs and/or Investigation Summary Fields (depending on what is available) for the ten most recent crimes and incidents identified in the search (excluding any that are subject to ongoing investigation)? Please redact any details that cannot be disclosed for privacy reasons, etc.
Response
Extent and Result of Searches to Locate Information
To locate the information relevant to your request, searches were conducted within North Yorkshire Police. Our crime recording system was searched for relevant crime classifications as described in your request, and then further for MO or summary comments containing Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, Instagram or YouTube. Our searches returned no results and therefore as North Yorkshire Police hold no information relevant to this request I can confirm we have no information to disclose.
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.