FOI 9246-25 Catapults and slingshots
Request to Northamptonshire Police:
- From 2019 to the most recent data available, how many crimes were logged by your police force where a slingshot was recorded as being an element in the offence? Please provide a yearly breakdown in a table (Note: I would hope that this could be achieved by a computer search on the MO of crimes for the word “slingshot” or synonyms like “catapult”)
- Please provide me with a table showing a breakdown of the crimes from Question 1 that are 'linked' to slingshot/s by its mention in the MO for 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025 by offence subgroup as per the Home Office counting rules
Response:
Northamptonshire Police systems are designed primarily for the management of individual cases and not for the production of statistical information for Freedom Of Information responses.
Crimes/Incidents have been searched between January 2019 and May 2025 where one of the following words appears within the MO Free Text field/Incident Description 'slingshot', 'sling-shot', 'sling shot' or 'catapult'.
As with any keyword search, the search will only return exact matches. 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 the data will not be returned.
|
|
2019 |
2020 |
2021 |
2022 |
2023 |
2024 |
2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
ASSAULT WITH INJURY |
|
2 |
|
1 |
|
|
|
|
ASSAULT WITHOUT INJURY |
|
2 |
|
|
|
|
1 |
|
CONTROLLING/COERCIVE BEHAVIOUR |
1 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
CRIM DAMAGE (OTHER BLDGS) |
|
1 |
|
1 |
|
|
1 |
|
CRIM DAMAGE TO DWELLINGS |
2 |
3 |
3 |
4 |
1 |
1 |
|
|
CRIMINAL DAMAGE OTHER |
|
|
|
|
1 |
|
|
|
CRIMINAL DAMAGE TO VEHS |
2 |
3 |
1 |
1 |
1 |
|
|
|
HARASSMENT (HARASSMENT ACT 1997) |
|
|
2 |
|
|
|
|
|
MALICIOUS COMMUNICATIONS |
|
1 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
POSSESSION OF FIREARM WITH INTENT |
|
|
1 |
|
|
|
|
|
POSSESSION OF OTHER WEAPONS |
|
|
|
|
1 |
|
|
|
PUBLIC FEAR, ALARM OR DISTRESS (PUBLIC ORDER ACT 1 |
|
|
2 |
2 |
1 |
2 |
|
|
RACIALLY OR RELIGIOUSLY AGGRAVATED CRIMINAL DAMAGE |
|
1 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
RACIALLY/RELIGIOUSLY AGG ASSAULT WITHOUT INJURY |
|
|
|
|
|
1 |
|
|
ROBBERY OF PERSONAL PROPERTY |
|
|
|
|
|
|
1 |
|
THREAT OF CRIM DAMAGE |
1 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
VIOLENT DISORDER |
|
|
1 |
|
|
|
|
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.