Stolen Sheep

Freedom of Information (FOI) Act request ref: 01/FOI/25/007871/I

Version Date: 16/04/2025

The Performance & Analysis Department have provided the following information.

Data Processing:                          

Crimes recorded on crime information system - NICHE                           

Cancelled crimes included, Non notifiable crimes excluded                               

Qliksense Report: Crime and Outcomes                                                                      

Filtered by date: November 15th 2022 to December 31st 2024                   

Offence Group: Robbery, Burglary (Residential and Buisness and Community), Theft from the Person, Shoplifting and Other Theft                                

MO and Summary searched for: Lamb, Ewe (space before and after ewe) and Sheep                                                                                                                   

Crimes recorded on crime information system - UNIFI                             

Cancelled crimes included, Non notifiable crimes excluded                   

Qlikview Report: Property Report                                                                      

Filtered by date: January 1st 2020 to November 14th 2022             

PROP_Stolen Flag: 1                                                                               

Category Level 2: Sheep                                                                         

(Outcome/status matched from Crime and Outcomes Qliksense report)

Data Limitations:

Devon and Cornwall Police transitioned to a new crime management system on November 14th 2022.                                                                                     

As a result of this migration, various reports, such as the property report, are currently unavailable for data post November 14th 2022.                                 

Dedicated teams are working to restore these reports, however, our searches for specific items stolen may be unreliable until such time that this report becomes available again.                                                                                                            

The search used for post November 14th 2022 data is reliant on the presence of the keywords used, but also works on the Principle Crime Rule. Meaning, if a theft is linked to a more serious offence, only the more serious offence appears in our search and therefore a theft may be missed if it is the lesser serious offence.

please provide me with the number of sheep reported stolen to the force, broken down into the following years: 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024.

Please note, I manually reviewed each occurrence for relevance and to find the number of sheep stolen. Not every occurrence had a specific number, so the actual number of sheep stolen may be higher than the figures given.

If there is time, please provide the outcome of each reported offence.