FOI 82/26 Machete Incidents

Date: 13/02/26 

Enquiry Reference: FOI 82-26                                                                                  

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

1. For the months of November and December 2025 how many crimes were logged by your force where a machete was recorded as being an element in the offence? [Note: I would hope that this could be achieved by a computer search on the MO of crimes for the words "machete" or variants of the spelling to include "machette" and "machetes".
2. a) 61.

2. Please provide me with a table showing a breakdown of the crimes from Question 1 that are `linked’ to machete/s by its mention in the MO.
3. a)

3.Taking the month of December 2025 please provide me with copies of the first 5 MOs that mention machetes. [Note: To avoid falling into an exemption I am content for names, ages, geography or any other personal detail to be redacted].

Having made enquires within the Force all the information we will disclose is above and we would also rely on the following;

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 Section 1(1) (b) is to disclose information that has been confirmed as being held.  Where exemptions are relied upon, Section 17 of the Freedom of Information Act requires that I provide the applicant with a notice which: a) states that fact b) specifies the exemption(s) in question and c) state (if that would not otherwise be apparent) why the exemption applies.

Cleveland Police can confirm it holds information pertinent to this request as the duty in Section 1(1) (a) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 does not apply, by virtue of the following exemption:

Section 40(2) Personal Information

Section 40(2) is an absolute exemption which does not require me to evidence the harm that disclosure would cause and does not require consideration of a public interest test in justification of its use.

This exemption is engaged where disclosure of information could lead to the identification of an individual, whether from the information alone or when combined with other data reasonably accessible to the public or held by the Police Service. In this case, due to the recent timeframe and specific nature of the MO, even disclosure of minimal detail could enable the reporting person to recognise themselves. As disclosures under FOI are made to the world at large, not solely to the requester, releasing this information would constitute an infringement of that individual’s privacy rights.

1. Personal data shall be:

“1. processed lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner in relation to the data subject ('lawfulness, fairness, transparency')"

To be considered exempt personal information, the information must satisfy one of two below conditions.

Principle: Lawful, Fair and Transparent

• Disclosure must not breach any statute, law, or regulation
• Disclosure should be reasonably expected by the data subject and not cause adverse impact on the data subject

Disclosure of the MO’s in my opinion would be unlawful and unfair, as it would reveal (or risk revealing) personal data relating to an identifiable individual without a lawful basis and contrary to their reasonable expectations.

In accordance with Section 17(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, this notification acts as a Refusal Notice to this section of your request.

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