UK Police

UK Police

The UK Police API provides open access to street-level crime, outcome, and stop-and-search data for England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. No authentication required.

Data Model

• Street crimes — crime reports anonymised to a nearby street/location point. Filter by lat/lng and month.
• Crime categories — canonical list of crime types (anti-social-behaviour, burglary, violent-crime, etc.).
• Outcomes — resolution status for crimes at a location (e.g., charged, cautioned, no further action).
• Stop and search — records of police stop-and-search encounters with demographics and outcomes.
• Forces — metadata for all 45 territorial police forces.

Gotchas

• Date format: Always YYYY-MM (year-month only, no day). Data lags 1-2 months behind present.
• Location snap: Crimes are snapped to an anonymous map point, not exact addresses.
• Large responses: High-crime areas can return thousands of records per month. Use specific coordinates.
• No pagination: Results are returned in full. The API may return 404 for months with no data.
• Rate limit: 15 requests per second with a burst of 30. Generous for most use cases.