Misuse of drones 232/2024
FOI Reference: 232/24
Request:
I am writing to you under the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act 2000. Please see below a request for the following information relating to incidents involving the misuse of drones, specifically those reported as being used for stalking or harassing victims.
Given the growing accessibility and use of drones, understanding their misuse for such purposes is crucial for public safety and privacy concerns.
Specifically, I would like to request the following information for each of the following time periods:
January 2018 – December 2018
January 2019 – December 2019
January 2020 - December 2020
January 2021 – December 2021
January 2022 – December 2022
January 2023– December 2023
January 2024 – February 2024 (most recent available)
Question 1:
What is the total number of incidents reported involving the misuse of drones per year?
Question 2:
How many incidents of drone misuse were reported to have been used for the purpose of crimes such as stalking, harassment, voyeurism per year?
Question 3:
Are there any patterns identified in these incidents;
- What is the nature of the harassment or stalking reported (e.g., surveillance, intimidation).
- How many investigations were launched per year?
- How many charges are filed per year?
- How many convictions are obtained per year?
Question 4:
Is there any guidance, policies, or initiatives implemented by your force to tackle the misuse of drones for stalking or harassment?
Question 5:
Lastly, we would be interested to know if you have an officer available for interview on the data you provide and whether or not it is possible to film with any victims and/or the police drone unit.
Response:
Section 1 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 places two duties on public authorities. Unless exemptions apply, the first duty at Section 1(1)(a) is to confirm or deny whether the information specified in a request is held. The second duty at Section1(1)(b) is to disclose information that has been confirmed as being held.
I can confirm that the cost of determining whether any information relative to questions 1-3 of this request is or isn’t held is above the amount to which we are legally required to respond therefore we are withholding the whole of the requested information since we consider that the Section 12(2) exemption the Cost of Compliance exceeds the Appropriate Limit applies to it.
Where exemptions are relied upon Section 17 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 requires Dyfed Powys Police, when refusing to provide such information (because the information is exempt) to provide you the applicant with a notice which:
(a) states that fact,
(b) specifies the exemption in question and
(c) states (if that would not otherwise be apparent) why the exemption applies. The following exemption has been applied to the whole of the information you have requested:
Section 12(2) – The cost of compliance exceeds the Appropriate Limit
Section 12(2) states:
“…Subsection (1) does not exempt the public authority from its obligation to comply with paragraph (a) of Section 1(1) unless the estimated cost of complying with that paragraph alone would exceed the appropriate limit.”
The cost of determining what information is held, if any, relevant to Question 2 of your request is above the amount to which we are legally required to respond i.e. the cost of locating and retrieving the information exceeds the “appropriate level” as stated in the Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004.
It is estimated that it would exceed 18 hours (i.e. minimum of 34,505 hours to comply with your request. The regulations can be located @ www.legislation.hmso.gov.uk/si/si2004/20043244.htm
The Freedom of Information Department has been advised that the information in respect of your request is not held in an easily retrievable format.
To identify which incident reports relate to ‘Stalking’ and ‘Harassment’ or ‘Voyeurism’, and which of those involved the use of a ‘Drone’, would mean the manual interrogation of those or similar key words within the details of the respective reports. At present we are unable to perform keyword searches on those type of reports.
Further to this, whilst we have been able to provide a time estimate in respect of incident reports categorised as ‘C-Domestic’, ‘C-Harassment’ and ‘P-Suspicious’ via tags that are applied, there is currently no tag for ‘Stalking’. This is in development.
Even then there is no specific tag for ‘Drone’, therefore a manual search would have to be conducted for it.
It has been established that for the period as specified within the request (i.e. 2018 – 2024) there are a total of 207,027 incident records that would require researching.
It has been estimated that it would take a minimum of 10 minutes to research a single incident for relevance to Question 2 your request as outlined above, resulting in the following broken down time estimate.
2018
Domestic - 9329 incident records @ 10 minutes = 1555 hours
Harassment - 6414 incident records @ 10 minutes =1069 hours
Suspicious - 11947 incident records @ 10 minutes = 1991 hours
To manually interrogate each incident record would take 4,615 hours
2019
Domestic - 11765 incident records @ 10 minutes = 1961 hours
Harassment - 6475 incident records @ 10 minutes = 1079 hours
Suspicious - 10813 incident records @ 10 minutes = 1802 hours
To manually interrogate each incident record would take 4,842 hours
2020
Domestic - 13043 incident records @ 10 minutes = 2174 hours
Harassment - 7891 incident records @ 10 minutes = 1315 hours
Suspicious - 11073 incident records @ 10 minutes = 1846 hours
To manually interrogate each incident record would take 5,335 hours
2021
Domestic - 13801 incident records @ 10 minutes = 2300 hours
Harassment - 11776 incident records @ 10 minutes = 1963 hours
Suspicious - 10958 incident records @ 10 minutes = 1826 hours
To manually interrogate each incident record would take 6,089 hours
2022
Domestic - 14794 incident records @ 10 minutes = 2466 hours
Harassment - 11879 incident records @ 10 minutes = 1980 hours
Suspicious - 9197 incident records @ 10 minutes = 1533 hours
To manually interrogate each incident record would take 5,979 hours
2023
Domestic - 15511 incident records @ 10 minutes = 2585 hours
Harassment - 12869 incident records @ 10 minutes = 2145 hours
Suspicious - 9257 incident records @ 10 minutes = 1543 hours
To manually interrogate each incident record would take 6,273 hours
01/01/2024 – 28/03/2024
Domestic - 3342 incident records @ 10 minutes = 557 hours
Harassment - 2857 incident records @ 10 minutes = 476 hours
Suspicious - 2036 incident records @ 10 minutes = 339 hours
To manually interrogate each incident record would take 1,372 hours
Total time estimate to complete whole request = 34,505 hours.
Please note: The above incident records quoted in the time estimate are categorised under the following tags,
- C-Domestic
- C-Harassment
- P-Suspicious
When the new C-Stalking tag comes into effect, this list will undoubtedly increase.
In accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000, this letter acts as a Refusal Notice for the WHOLE of this request under Section 17(5) A public authority which, in relation to any request for information, is relying on a claim that Section 12 or Section 14 applies must, within the time for complying with Section 1(1), give the applicant a notice stating that fact.
You may wish to refine and resubmit your request so that it reduces the time shown above to fall within the 18 hours, however with due regard to the time estimate provided above it is unlikely that refining your request will fall under the 18 hours as the same method and format will have to be undertaken. Should you require any further advice in relation to this matter please don’t hesitate to contact the Freedom of Information Unit.
Please also be advised that should the request be refined, it does not remove the Force’s right to cite exemptions if relevant.
Goodwill:
Although excess cost removes the forces obligations under the Freedom of Information Act to provide any further information, as a gesture of goodwill, I have provided the following information, which I trust you will find helpful. It does not affect our legal right to rely on the fees regulations for the remainder of your request.
Question 1
This would also result in a time estimate as there is no specific tag for ‘Drone’, therefore we would have to manually search all relevant records to determine if one was used.
Question 3
Again, this would be subject to a time estimate as we would not readily be able to determine the number of applicable incidents/ crimes.
Question 4
There is currently no such Policy held by Dyfed-Powys Police.
Question 5
We could potentially provide an officer to be interviewed in respect of the Police Drone Unit, and it may be possible to film the Police Drone Unit provided relevant vetting etc. is completed, however the officer interviewed would only be able to comment on the work of the Drone Unit on a task basis as they would not have access to any of the data requested above.
It would be appropriate to contact our Press Office ([email protected]) should you wish to discuss interviewing a member of the Police Drone Unit generally.
In respect of filming with victims, it would prove difficult in that we would first need to identify specific victims, as per the above rational, and then approach them to see if they would be willing to be interviewed. We do not believe this is either reasonable or appropriate.
(This is a response under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and disclosed on 08/04/24)