'Big Cat' Sightings in 2021
Keywords
Big, Cat, Wild, Domestic, Puma, Leopard, Lynx, Species, Sightings, False, True, Confirmed, Location, Response, Summary.
Publication Number
PUB 1454
FOI Reference Number
16604
Request Title
'Big Cat' Sightings in 2021
Date Range
2021
Information Requested
1. In relation to the 2021 calendar year, on how many occasions were the police informed that there had been a sighting of a ‘big cat’, i.e. a wild cat, which was significantly larger than a domestic cat and was thought could have been a puma, leopard, lynx or other large member of the cat species?
Could you please state how many of the sightings were confirmed to be (a) false, (b) true or (c) unable to be confirmed one way or the other.
2. In relation to the last three sightings that you logged in 2021, please provide me with a summary of the sighting. This should include (i) what was alleged to have been seen, (ii) the location of the sighting and (iii) what if any police response there was to the sighting.
Disclosure with Exemptions
Full Refusal with Section 12 Exemption
Information Correct as at
N/A
Date of Disclosure
23 March 2022
Related Documents/Links
N/A
FOI 16604 Response
Having completed enquiries within Essex Police in respect of Section 1(1)(a), Essex Police does hold information relating to your request, however, the obligation of Section 1(1)(b) cannot be met as Essex Police does not hold all the information requested in a format that allows it to be retrieved within the time and cost limits of FOI.
When responding to a request for information under the terms of the FOIA, 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 FOIA 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 outlines the difficulty Essex Police has in answering your request:
Essex Police are unable to accurately extract the level of detail in relation to your request for the requested period from our current systems. Essex Police systems are designed primarily for the management of individual cases and not primarily for the production of statistical information for FOI responses. This request would entail manually extracting the requested data and then reviewing each incident one by one to establish if it meets the criteria. To establish if information is held would, therefore, exceed the time and cost limits under the FOIA and would 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. There is no requirement under the act to create data purely to answer FOI requests.
Consequently, and to this extent, Essex Police are exempt from the duty to provide information you have requested under the provisions of Section 12(1) of the FOIA. Therefore, and in accordance with Section 17(1) of the FOIA, 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.
Section 16(1) of the FOIA provides that a public authority is required to provide advice and assistance, Essex Police can confirm that a keyword search could be undertaken on the S.T.O.R.M. Command and Control system for particular words if required. However, any keyword search may not be entirely accurate and any results could include derivatives of the keywords as part of other words and others unspecific and not related to the theme that your request falls under i.e. Puma tracksuits. Therefore, any keyword search would not necessarily answer your submission and could be highly inaccurate and misleading.
For a keyword search to be undertaken, you would need to provide a list of keywords you would like searched.
The intention of Section 16 is to provide assistance in resubmitting a valid request. Please note that any advice and assistance under Section 16 regarding resubmission of a request does not indicate that resubmission will provide a full disclosure, each submission will be assessed and if a disclosure is deemed harmful, then the appropriate exemptions will apply.