2022/24952 - Extraterrestrial sightings

REQUEST

How many reports of UFO, ghosts, witches and extra-terrestrial activities were recorded by your force in 2021, 2022?

This information should include the date, time, location, the action taken by the force

RESPONSE

The following information was gathered by conducting a keyword search on incidents’ open text using the following terms:

‘UFO’

‘Unidentified Flying Object’

‘ghost’

‘ghosts’

‘witches’

‘extraterrestrial’

‘extra-terrestrial’

A manual trawl was then conducted to identify whether the results were relevant to the query. There was 1 result which included ‘witches’ in the open text. Due to the low number of results, no further information can be provided, as this along with publicly available information may help identify any persons involved.  Please see below for the following exemption:

Section 40(5) – Personal Information

The exemption applicable to the information you have requested for this question can be found at Section 40(5) – Personal Information, of the Act and this refusal notice is issued under Section 17.

Disclosure under Freedom of Information is a release of information to the world in general and not an individual applicant. Therefore, simply confirming or not that such information were held would disclose personal information about individuals.

As such, any disclosure that identifies an individual or identifies that an individual has had contact with Gwent Police or not is exempt. Personal data is defined under Section 10 of the Data Protection Act 2018 as:

Data which relate to a living individual who can be identified-

(a) from those data, or

(b) from those data and other information, which is in the possession of, or is likely to come into the possession of, the data controller, and includes any expression of opinion about the individual and any indication of the intentions of the data controller or any other person in respect of the individual. “

In accordance with the Act, this represents a Refusal Notice for this part of your request. No inference can be taken from this refusal that the information you have requested does or does not exist.

Under Section 16 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, we have a duty to assist you where possible. Therefore, to establish if personal data is being processed by Gwent Police, individuals are required to make application under section 7 of the Data Protection Act 1998, by means of submitting a completed Data Protection Subject Access form.