Overview
The UK Police API provides open access to crime data, police force information, and neighborhood policing data across England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. You can retrieve crime statistics by location, list police forces, and find neighborhood teams for any area. It's completely free with no API key required, making it ideal for civic tech projects and data journalism.
Beginner Tip
Use the /crimes-street/{category} endpoint with a lat and lng parameter to get crimes near any UK location — latitude/longitude for UK cities are easy to find on Google Maps.
Measurement Record
What actually happened when we called this API from our own infrastructure. Every value below was recorded by the request, not copied from the provider's documentation.
- Request
- GET https://data.police.uk/api/crimes-street/all-crime?lat=51.5074&lng=-0.1278&date=2024-01
- Result
- HTTP 200 · application/json · 2,758,593 bytes · compressed
- Response time
- 363 ms (median of 3) · fastest 315 ms
- Transport
- TLSv1.3 · TLS_AES_128_GCM_SHA256 · certificate issued by Amazon
- Browser CORS
- Allowed — Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *
- Recorded
- 2026-08-10
Available Data
The kind of data this API exposes, based on its documentation. We could not call the endpoint to confirm the exact field names.
Example Response
Illustrative shape only — we were not able to call this endpoint (it requires credentials or exposes no public sample URL), so the fields below show the kind of data this API returns rather than a recorded response.
{
"status": "success",
"data": {
"result": "Data from UK Police",
"description": "UK Police data",
"timestamp": "2025-01-15T10:00:00Z"
}
} Field Reference
category Crime category slug, e.g., violent-crime, burglary, vehicle-crime. location_type Whether the crime occurred at a Force or BTP (British Transport Police) location. location Approximate street location including latitude, longitude, and street name. month The month this crime was recorded, in YYYY-MM format. outcome_status Latest investigation outcome (e.g., "Under investigation", "No suspect identified"), or null if pending. id Unique identifier for this crime record. Implementation Example
Calls a real endpoint of this API. Replace any placeholder credentials with your own key.
const url = "https://data.police.uk/api/crimes-street/all-crime?lat=51.5074&lng=-0.1278&date=2024-01";
const response = await fetch(url);
if (!response.ok) throw new Error(`Request failed: ${response.status}`);
const data = await response.json();
console.log(data); What Can You Build?
Note: These code examples are AI-generated and unverified. Always refer to the official API documentation for accurate usage.
How This API Fails
We deliberately sent this API a broken request and recorded exactly what came back on 2026-08-10. Knowing the shape of an error before you hit it makes error handling much easier to write.
Returned an HTML error page rather than JSON — worth knowing if your client assumes every response can be parsed as JSON.
Returned an HTML error page rather than JSON — worth knowing if your client assumes every response can be parsed as JSON.
Common Errors & Troubleshooting
Generated guidance based on this API's documentation, not observed by us. Treat it as a starting point and check against the provider's own error reference.
Measured Score Breakdown
Live HTTP request to the API endpoint
Fully tested on Aug 10, 2026
Technical Specifications
Related Tags
Similar APIs
View All →EmailRep
⭐ Beginner's PickEmailRep is a free API that evaluates the risk and reputation of an email address in seconds.
FilterLists
⭐ Beginner's PickFilterLists is a community-maintained directory API that catalogs hundreds of filter lists used by ad blockers and firewalls like uBlock Origin and Pi-hole.
Passwordinator
⭐ Beginner's PickThe Passwordinator API generates random passwords with customizable complexity, length, and character sets.
FingerprintJS Pro
FingerprintJS Pro is a browser fingerprinting API that identifies visitors with extreme accuracy, even in incognito mode.
HaveIBeenPwned
⭐ Beginner's PickHave I Been Pwned (HIBP) lets you check whether an email address or password has appeared in known data breaches.