FOI 45/25 Spiking Involving Vapes

Enquiry Reference: FOI  45-25                                                                                 

I write in connection with regards to your Freedom of Information request.  Below is your request and our response.

Confirmed or suspected spiking incidents involving vapes or similar over the last 5 years (2020, 21, 22, 23, 24 – i.e. attended / charged / investigated incidents)

I would like this information broken down by the following, where available:

• Age
• Gender
• Whether the incident occurred at a place of education, for example school or college
• Whether the victim required any treatment at hospital
• Date of the incident
• The drugs involved i.e. spice, nitazenes

Background:

I don’t know how these offences may be recorded in your system, but the range of crimes listed could include:

• Administering drug with intent to commit indictable offence
• Administering poison so as to endanger life
• Use of noxious substances of things to cause harm and intimidate
• Administering poison with intent to injure or annoy
• Administering a substance with intent

Please where possible cross reference these offences with records that directly mention spiking and vapes.

There is a specific definition and criteria from the Home office regarding the recording of spiking offences this includes violence, robbery and sexual offences, whilst also searching for Keywords in the MO comments/Occurrence summary. The search also includes ‘administering poison’. Therefore, our search is built on criteria and not necessarily a spiking crime.

For this request, the analyst has used the above search and searched for ‘Vape’ in the MO comments. Since there were only a few, they read through the MO comments and summary to establish the location and drugs/substance involved. The table includes the crime class, so will answer the background part of the request. PLEASE NOE A further caveat would be that the substance column is what has been mentioned in the MO comments, this is not what was necessarily used.

The below are all for crime class 008/02 - Administering poison with intent to injure or annoy.

Having made enquiries within the Force above is all the information we hold. Please note that all statistical data supplied in relation to Freedom of Information requests is a snapshot of data held at the time the request was received by the Freedom of Information office and is subject to constant change/updates.

The Cleveland Police response to your request is unique and it should be noted that Police Forces do not use generic systems or identical procedures to capture and record data therefore responses from Cleveland Police should not be used as a comparison with any other force response you receive.

If you are not satisfied with this response or any actions taken in dealing with your request, you have the right to request an independent internal review of your case under our review procedure. The Freedom of Information Code of Practice (see below link) states that a request for internal review should be made within 20 working days of the date on this response or 40 working days if extenuating circumstances to account for the delay can be evidenced. Public authorities are not obliged to accept internal reviews after this date.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/freedom-of-information-code-of-practice

Yours sincerely

Information Rights Decision Maker