FOI 15240-25 Learner Mopeds

Request:

Question 1: Please provide the number of crime or incident reports recorded by your force in which mopeds with L plates are specifically mentioned, for each of the past five calendar years, please provide the years 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024.

Question 2: Where available, please provide a breakdown by:
i.) Offence type of crime or incident reports recorded by your force in which mopeds with L plates are specifically mentioned for:
• Theft
• - please provide both the proportion and number of the offences for 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024.

• Assault
• - please provide both the proportion and number of the offences for 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024.

• Dangerous driving
• - please provide both the proportion and number of the offences for 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024.

• Driving without a licence -
• please provide both the proportion and number of the offences for 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024.

ii.) Whether the moped involved in the offences relating to Question 2, i.) was recorded as a suspect vehicle, a stolen vehicle, or otherwise involved:
• Suspect vehicle
• - please provide both the proportion and number of records for 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024.

• Stolen vehicle
• - please provide both the proportion and number of records for 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024.

• Otherwise involved
• - please provide both the proportion and number of records for 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024.

Response:

Northamptonshire Police records ‘incidents’ from requests from members of the public requiring police assistance. These requests for assistance may be made via 101/999 or online submissions via the Northamptonshire Police website. Not all incident reports generate a crime report, and not all crime reports come from an incident report.

Crimes and incidents searched for the calendar years 2029 to 2024 where both of the following keywords appear within the MO Free Text field or Incident Description: “moped” and “L plates”, using a manual review to confirm that the crime or incident refers specifically to a moped with L plates.

Question 1:
2019 – 10
2020 – 14
2021 – 16
2022 – 16
2023 – 1
2024 – 8

As explained above, not all incidents are linked to a crime. Offence types relevant to your request are linked to crime records, but not incident records. Therefore, only crimes have been searched to answer question 2.

Question 2:
i)
Theft:
2019 – 0
2020 – 0
2021 – 0
2022 – 0
2023 – 0
2024 – 0

Assault:
2019 – 0
2020 – 0
2021 – 0
2022 – 0
2023 – 0
2024 – 0

Dangerous driving:
2019 – 0
2020 – 0
2021 – 0
2022 – 0
2023 – 0
2024 – 0

Driving without a licence:
2019 – 0
2020 – 0
2021 – 0
2022 – 0
2023 – 0
2024 – 0

ii) N/A

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.

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

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.

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 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.