September 29, 2021 | Policing Themes, Operations and Investigations
Reference: FOI-2021-01251
Request
Request 1
How many missing persons incidents resulted in a public appeal issued by the police force during the following periods:
- April 1st, 2020 - March 31st, 2021
- April 1st, 2019 - March 31st, 2020
- April 1st, 2018 - March 31st, 2019
- April 1st, 2017 - March 31st, 2018
Please provide the figures for each of these periods broken down by ethnicity of the missing person who is the subject of the appeal, e.g. White, Black, Asian, South East Asian, Chinese, Japanese, Middle Eastern, mixed race, other, unknown.
By the term 'public appeal', I mean any method of publicity employed by the force to ask members of the public to come forward with information or raise awareness, such as posters, online adverts, posts on social media, press releases, etc.
Please provide that information in an excel format.
Request 2
Can you please also tell me if the police force has any formal guidelines or policy to decide when a missing person’s case should result in a public appeal?