Stop and searches by area

Request parameters

Specific point

lat	Latitude of the centre of the desired area
lng	Longitude of the centre of the desired area
date	Optional. (YYYY-MM) Limit results to a specific month. The latest month will be shown by default

Custom area

poly	The lat/lng pairs which define the boundary of the custom area
date	Optional. (YYYY-MM) Limit results to a specific month. The latest month will be shown by default

The poly parameter is formatted in lat/lng pairs, separated by colons:

[lat],[lng]:[lat],[lng]:[lat],[lng]

The first and last coordinates need not be the same — they will be joined by a straight line once the request is made.

The API will return a 400 status code in response to a GET request longer than 4094 characters. For submitting particularly complex poly parameters, consider using POST instead.

Example request

Specific point

https://data.police.uk/api/stops-street?date=2024-01&lat=52.629729&lng=-1.131592

Custom area

https://data.police.uk/api/stops-street?date=2024-01&poly=52.278,0.563:52.794,0.238:52.130,0.478

Example response

[
    {
        "age_range": "10-17", 
        "officer_defined_ethnicity": "White", 
        "involved_person": true, 
        "self_defined_ethnicity": "White - English/Welsh/Scottish/Northern Irish/British", 
        "gender": "Male", 
        "legislation": "Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (section 1)", 
        "outcome_linked_to_object_of_search": null, 
        "datetime": "2024-01-04T07:41:00+00:00", 
        "outcome_object": {
            "id": "bu-no-further-action", 
            "name": "A no further action disposal"
        }, 
        "location": {
            "latitude": "52.630693", 
            "street": {
                "id": 1738552, 
                "name": "On or near Wellington Street"
            }, 
            "longitude": "-1.129885"
        }, 
        "object_of_search": "Offensive weapons", 
        "operation": null, 
        "outcome": "A no further action disposal", 
        "type": "Person search", 
        "operation_name": null, 
        "removal_of_more_than_outer_clothing": false
    }, 
    {
        "age_range": "25-34", 
        "officer_defined_ethnicity": "Asian", 
        "involved_person": true, 
        "self_defined_ethnicity": "Asian/Asian British - Indian", 
        "gender": "Male", 
        "legislation": null, 
        "outcome_linked_to_object_of_search": true, 
        "datetime": "2024-01-05T15:00:00+00:00", 
        "outcome_object": {
            "id": "bu-community-resolution", 
            "name": "Community resolution"
        }, 
        "location": {
            "latitude": "52.626044", 
            "street": {
                "id": 1739135, 
                "name": "On or near Abingdon Road"
            }, 
            "longitude": "-1.115086"
        }, 
        "object_of_search": "Controlled drugs", 
        "operation": null, 
        "outcome": "Community resolution", 
        "type": "Person search", 
        "operation_name": null, 
        "removal_of_more_than_outer_clothing": false
    }, 
    ...
]

Response description

Tag	Description
type	Whether this was a 'Person search', a 'Vehicle search', or a 'Person and Vehicle search'
involved_person	Whether a person was searched in this incident (derived from type; true if anything but 'Vehicle search')
datetime	When the stop and search took place. Note that some forces only provide dates for their stop and searches, so you might see a disproportionate number of incidents occuring at midnight.
operation	Whether this stop and search was part of a policing operation
operation_name	The name of the operation this stop and search was part of
location	Approximate location of the incident
latitude	Latitude
longitude	Longitude
street	The approximate location of the incident
id	Unique identifier for the location
name	Human-readable summary of the location
gender	Human-readable gender of the person stopped, if applicable and provided
age_range	The age range of the person stopped at the time the stop occurred
self_defined_ethnicity	The self-defined ethnicity of the person stopped
officer_defined_ethnicity	The officer-defined ethnicity of the person stopped
legislation	The power used to carry out the stop and search
object_of_search	The reason the stop and search was carried out
outcome	The outcome of the stop. false if nothing was found, an empty string if no outcome was provided.
outcome_linked_to_object_of_search	Whether the outcome was related to the reason the stop and search was carried out, as a boolean value (or null if not provided)
removal_of_more_than_outer_clothing	Whether the person searched had more than their outer clothing removed, as a boolean value (or null if not provided)