FOI 616-25 Crimes at churches

Request:

I would like to ask about crimes recorded by Police at churches or on church property under the Freedom of Information Act:

1. How many crimes have been recorded by your force involving theft from/at churches or from/at church property from January 1 2022- December 30 2024?

a) If possible please could you clarify how many of the thefts recorded relate to lead being taken from the church roof?

2. How many crimes have been recorded by your force involving assault (physical/violent) at churches or on church property from January 1 2022- December 30 2024?

3. How many crimes have been recorded of vandalism by your force on churches or on church property from January 1 2022- December 30 2024?

Note: Some forces do not log 'church' as a building type specifically and may instead log location as religious building. For the avoidance of doubt, I would like data related to religious buildings in this instance.

Response:

Please note, although the location has been logged as a church/religious building or churchyard, it does not mean that every incident relates to that church. The information provided could include incidents reported near the church or in the grounds or because it is the nearest identifiable landmark for crime recording.

1. 142 ‘Theft Offences’
1.a) Keyword search for ‘lead’ = 5

As with any keyword search, the search will only return exact matches within the Incident Description or Crime MO. This does not account for differences in terminology and/or spelling used. Keyword searches are problematic and in no way provide accurate results or figures. If the selected key words have not been mentioned in the MO the data will not be returned.

2. 64 ‘Violence Against the Person’ offences

3. 73 ‘Criminal Damage & Arson’ offences

The numerical data presented in this response is an un-audited snapshot of un-published data sourced from "live" systems and is subject to the interpretation of the original request by the individual extracting the data.

Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that the data has been extracted from a number of data sources used by forces for police purposes. The detail collected to respond specifically to your request is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large scale recording system. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when interpreting the data.

The figures provided therefore are our best interpretation of relevance of data to your request, but you should be aware that the collation of figures for ad hoc requests may have limitations and this should be taken into account when the data is used.

If you decide to write an article / use the enclosed data we would ask you to take into consideration the factors highlighted in this document so as to not mislead members of the public or official bodies or misrepresent the relevance of the whole or any part of this disclosed material.