Dog thefts and attempted thefts for 2019-2020

The request was refused by North Wales Police.

Dear North Wales Police,

Please provide the number of reported dog thefts and attempted dog thefts per month for 2019 and 2020.

Yours faithfully,

Brian Slack

Freedom of Information Team, North Wales Police

1 Attachment

Good Morning,

Unfortunately, ‘Dog Theft’ is not a specific offence on our Crime recording system, therefore it would require the key word search for a term like ‘dog’ etc. However, this does not return reliable data e.g. you could have someone reporting their ‘pedigree Shih Tzu’ without using the term dog, therefore the incident would not be returned. Or, there could be an incident involving the theft of ‘dog’ food, and an occurrence where the dog was reported stolen and was actually just temporarily missing. Therefore, we would have to carry out manual search of every theft recorded on our system to try and retrieve data that fell into the remit of your request, and to ensure we have captured everything. The cost of providing you with the information is above the amount to which we are legally required to respond i.e. the cost of retrieving the information exceeds the ‘appropriate level’ as stated in the Freedom of Information (FOI) Fees and Appropriate Limit regulations 2004.

Therefore, in accordance with the FOI Act 2000 the information you have requested is exempt under Section 12 (1), and this letter acts as a Refusal Notice under section 17 (5) of the legislation.

Please find attached a couple of previous responses we have released where we have done a key word search. However, please note: this response is a key word search (as per the list) for all recorded Theft/Burglary offences. It will include offences that in no way relate to the theft of a dog.

Kind Regards,

Ceri Hollingworth
Safonau Gwybodaeth a Chydymffurfiaeth/Information Standards and Compliance                         
E.bost/ E.mail [email address]

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