Aircraft – Laser Incidents

KEYWORDS

Aircraft, Lasers, Planes, beam, aviation

PUBLICATION NUMBER

PUB 1121

FOI REFERENCE NUMBER(S)

15147

FOI REFERENCE NUMBER

REQUEST TITLE

Aircraft – Laser Incidents

DATE RANGE

2019-2020

INFORMATION REQUESTED

How many incidents of lasers being directed at aircraft were reported to your police force in 2019 and 2020.

Please show the data for 2019 and 2020 separately and in calendar years.

For each of these incidents could you provide the following information please:

Could you specify if arrests were made in these incidents and what act and section people were arrested under.

Could you specify what type of laser was involved.

Could you specify what type of aircraft was involved in the incident (For example: aeroplane, helicopter, hot air balloon etc.).

Could you specify what model the aircraft was (For example: Airbus A380, Boeing AH-64 Apache etc.).

Could you also specify the use of the aircraft involved (For example: police helicopter, air ambulance. commercial aircraft, military aircraft etc.).

DISCLOSURE WITH EXEMPTIONS

Section 12(1)

INFORMATION CORRECT AS AT

8/1/21

DATE OF DISCLOSURE

25/1/21

RELATED DOCUMENTS

FOI 15157  RESPONSE

In respect of Sec 1(1)(a), Essex Police does hold information relating to your request, however in respect of Sec 1(1)(b) Essex Police does not hold the information in a format that allows it to be retrieved within the scope of FOI.

When responding to a request for information under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act, a public authority is not obliged to provide information if the authority estimates that the cost of the retrieval of the information requested would be in excess of £450 (equivalent to 18 hours work). The costs criteria relates to a request in its entirety, which means that if we cannot retrieve all of the information requested within the costs limit, we are not obliged to retrieve any of the information requested.

Section 12(1) of the Freedom of Information Act states that a public authority is not obliged to:

“…comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying with the request would exceed the appropriate limit.”

The following explanation has been provided demonstrating the difficulty in retrieving information; Essex police would need to manually review each incident to establish if free text regarding the type of laser, model and type of aircraft is held.  This process would exceed the time and cost limits of FOI would also qualify as the creation of data as the results cannot be processed by means of purely sorting or filtering data sources or running a database query tool.

Essex Police are therefore exempt from the duty to provide this part of the information you have requested under the provisions of section 12(1) of the FOI Act and formally under Section 17(1) of the Act, this communication must act as a refusal notice to provide all of the information that could be interpreted as being captured by this part of your request.

In an effort to assist under Section 16 of the act, and outside of the above obligations, Essex Police can provide incident and arrest data.

Month	Number of Incidents
201901	4
201902	3
201903	2
201904	5
201905	6
201906	3
201907	7
201908	4
201909	3
201910	2
201911	3
201912	3
202001	3
202002	3
202003	2
202004	2
202005	4
202006	1
202007	3
202008	1
202009	2
202010	3
202011	5
Grand Total	74

 

Year	Number of Incidents
2019	45
2020	29
Grand Total	74

1 Arrest was in 2020, Arrest title - Shine / direct laser beam towards a land / water vehicle or aircraft & Endangering aircraft - Aviation Security Act 1982 Act and Section: Contrary to section 1(1) and (4) of the Laser Misuse (Vehicles) Act 2018.