UK Police Crime Data Scraper

UK Police Crime Data Scraper

Scrape UK Police crime data from any location, force, or month, up to a million records per run. Every record comes with its category, location, and outcome status. No API key. Export to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML.

The UK Police data API gives you street-level crimes, stop-and-search records, forces, and neighbourhoods, but querying it means writing your own HTTP client and handling pagination. This Actor reads the public data.police.uk endpoints directly, filtered by location, date, category, or force, and returns each match in one fixed schema.

Who uses it	What they scrape UK Police for
Journalists	Which crime categories are rising in a specific neighbourhood this month
Researchers	Comparing stop-and-search rates across different police forces
Local councils	Monitoring crime trends around a planned development site
Data analysts	Building a time series of burglaries for a city over several months

What it does

This Actor collects UK Police crime records by location, force, or month, and returns each one as a flat row.

• 📍 Crimes at Location: street-level crimes within a radius of a latitude and longitude, filtered by month and category.
• 🔍 Stop & Search by Force: stop-and-search records for a specific police force and month.
• 🏛️ List Forces: all UK police forces with their IDs and names.
• 🏘️ List Neighbourhoods: neighbourhoods within a specific police force.

Results export to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML, or straight from the API.

What you can do with UK Police data

📈 Track crime trends by month.

A local newsroom runs the Actor for the same Leicester postcode each month and charts how burglary and violent crime counts change over the year.

🗺️ Map incidents around a location.

A neighbourhood watch group scrapes all crimes within 1 km of a community centre and plots them on a map to spot hotspots.

⚖️ Compare stop-and-search across forces.

A researcher pulls stop-and-search records for the Metropolitan and West Yorkshire forces for the same month and compares rates by ethnicity and outcome.

🏛️ Build a directory of UK police forces.

A developer lists all forces with their IDs and names to power a lookup table in another application.

Why choose this scraper

	What you get
No API key	The public data.police.uk API needs no registration or token, and this Actor handles the requests for you.
Fixed schema	Every record comes out as a flat row with the same fields, ready for a spreadsheet or database.
Up to a million rows	Set maxItems to collect as many records as you need in a single run.
Four endpoints	Crimes, stop-and-search, forces, and neighbourhoods in one Actor.

How it compares

No other Store actor targets UK Police the same way, so the honest comparison is with the alternatives teams actually weigh.

	UK Police Crime Data Scraper	Build it in-house	By hand
Setup	Run it now, zero config	Days of engineering	None, but hours per pull
When UK Police changes	Maintained for you	You fix it	You re-learn the page
Proxies, retries, anti-bot	Built in	Your problem	Browser only
Output	Fixed JSON schema, CSV/Excel export	Whatever you build	Copy-paste
Cost	Pay per result	Engineering time	Analyst hours

Configure the run

Drive the Actor from a location, force, date, and category, alone or together, and filters run as each record is read so only matches reach your dataset. The Input tab lists every parameter.

A first run with the defaults:

{
  "maxItems": 10,
  "mode": "crimes",
  "lat": "52.629729",
  "lng": "-1.131592",
  "force": "metropolitan"
}

A larger pull:

{
  "maxItems": 200,
  "mode": "crimes",
  "lat": "52.629729",
  "lng": "-1.131592",
  "force": "metropolitan"
}

Pricing

Pay-per-result: $0.00999 per result collected. You pay only for the results written to your dataset.

Results collected	Approximate cost
100 results	$1.00
1,000 results	$9.99
10,000 results	$99.90

New Apify accounts start with $5 in free credit.

Free users

Free-plan runs return up to 10 results as a preview. Upgrade your Apify plan to collect up to 1,000,000 results per run.

Run it

1. Create a free Apify account with $5 in credit.
2. Open the UK Police Crime Data Scraper.
3. Set your inputs and any filters, then click Start.
4. Export the results as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML from the Dataset tab.

Run it programmatically through the Apify API (run-sync-get-dataset-items) or the ApifyClient for JavaScript and Python.

Use with AI agents (MCP)

Give an AI agent live access to UK Police through the Model Context Protocol. Add the Actor to Claude, Cursor, or any MCP client:

$claude mcp add --transport http apify "https://mcp.apify.com?tools=parseforge/uk-police-crime-scraper"

Then prompt it in plain language to run the scraper and read back the results.

Troubleshooting

Why am I getting no results?

Check that your latitude and longitude are within the UK and that the date is not in the future. Also try leaving the category empty to see if any crimes exist at that location.

The Actor returns an error about an invalid force.

Make sure you are using the correct force slug. Run List Forces mode to see all valid slugs.

I asked for 10,000 records but only got 500.

The API only returns crimes for the month you specified, and only within a 1 mile radius. Try a different month or a more central location.

Can I get data older than the latest month?

Yes. Set the date field to any month in the format YYYY-MM. The API keeps historical data back to December 2010.

FAQ

Question	Answer
Do I need an API key for UK Police data?	No. The data.police.uk API is public and requires no authentication. This Actor calls it directly.
What is the maximum number of records I can get?	You can set maxItems up to 1,000,000 per run. The actual number returned depends on how many records match your filters.
Can I filter crimes by type?	Yes. In Crimes mode, set the category field to a slug like burglary, violent-crime, or anti-social-behaviour. Leave it empty to get all categories.
How do I specify a location?	In Crimes mode, provide a latitude and longitude. The API returns crimes within a 1 mile radius of that point.
What date format should I use?	Use YYYY-MM, for example 2024-01. Leave the date field empty to get the latest available month.
Can I get stop-and-search data for a specific force?	Yes. Switch to Stop & Search by Force mode and enter the force slug, such as metropolitan or west-yorkshire.
How do I list all police forces?	Select List Forces mode. The Actor returns every UK police force with its ID and name.
What is a force slug?	A short identifier for a police force, like metropolitan for the Met or thames-valley for Thames Valley Police. You can get the full list from List Forces mode.
Can I export the data to CSV?	Yes. The Actor supports CSV, JSON, Excel, and XML exports from the Apify dataset.
Does this cover the whole UK?	It covers England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Police Scotland does not publish to data.police.uk, so Scottish data is not included.

Related actors

Browse the full ParseForge collection for more scrapers.

🆘 Need help? Email parseforge@protonmail.com with your run ID, your input, and what you expected.

⚠️ Disclaimer. This Actor is unofficial and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by UK Police. It collects only publicly available data. You are responsible for using the collected data in compliance with the source's terms of service and applicable data-protection laws, including GDPR, CCPA, and PIPL. Do not use it to collect personal data unlawfully.