XL Bully attacks

Freedom of Information (FOI) Act request ref: 01/FOI/24/006906/Z

Version Date: 15/01/2025

- How many XL bully attacks have been recorded in your area since 1 Feb 2024?
- Could you also share how many XL bully attacks were recorded last year from Jan 23 to Dec 23?

The Performance & Analysis Department has provided the following information.

Data Processing:                                                                                                                                                           

Crimes recorded on crime information system - NICHE                                                                                  

 'No crimes' and 'non notifiables' included                                                                                 

Qliksense Report: Crimes & Outcomes                                                                          

Filtered by date: 01/01/2023 to 31/12/2023 and 01/02/2024 to 14/08/2024                                                                         

Offence Description                                                                                 

Owner / person in charge of a dog dangerously out of control - no injury    
Owner / person in charge of dog dangerously out of control causing injury
Person in charge of a dog allow it to be dangerously out of control in public place and cause injury                                                                                   

Owner of a dog allow it to be dangerously out of control in public place and cause injury                                                                        

Owner / person in charge of dog dangerously out of control in a public place - no injury                                                                          

Owner / person in charge of dog dangerously out of control causing injury to assistance dog                                                                             

Owner / person in charge of a dog dangerously out of control causing injury resulting in death                                                                         

Data was extracted then searched for "XL Bull" and/or "XL-Bull"                                                                              

Qliksense Report: MO Text Search                                                                                 

Occurrence Date Time Created: 01/01/2023 to 10/12/2024                                                                            

Type: Victim Details, Victim Offender Interaction, Offender Action Details, Miscellaneous Details and Text                                                                                

Keywords searched for: xl-bull or xl bull                                                                         

Data Limitations:                                                                                                                                                              

"Offences relating to dogs are not notifiable to the Home Office by Police Forces. Therefore Police are not required to record a crime in respect of these. As a result, figures for these offences after November 14th 2022 are highly likely to decrease.

Police are required to record the reported incident on our command-and-control system. However, such incidents are not easily located given the very generic classifications applied to the incidents, namely ASB – Animal problems, or Public Safety – Animals/Wildlife."                                                                                 

The figures include attacks on a person and/or another dog

Instances where an XL Bully or possible XL Bully was reported as unmuzzled or out of control or where people were in fear of an attack but no attack or attempted attack took place have been excluded from the figures.

01/01/2023 to 31/12/2023  19 attacks

01/02/2024 to 14/08/2024  54 attacks