# What they were looking for

> Drugs, stolen property, weapons: what officers recorded as the object of each search.

- Category: Crime
- Cadence: monthly
- Status: Published on a monthly cadence.
- Dataset key: `search-objects`
- Source: [Police.uk](https://data.police.uk/)
- Licence: Open Government Licence v3.0 — [terms](https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/)
- Canonical page: [https://londongraph.com/g/what-they-were-looking-for](https://londongraph.com/g/what-they-were-looking-for)
- Machine-readable record: [https://londongraph.com/data/what-they-were-looking-for](https://londongraph.com/data/what-they-were-looking-for)

## Methodology

The object of search recorded for every Metropolitan Police stop and search in the latest six published months, shown as a share of that month's searches. This describes what officers said they were looking for, not what was found. Missing objects remain Not recorded rather than being assigned to another category.

## Visualisations

- [Objects](https://londongraph.com/g/what-they-were-looking-for): What officers recorded as the object of each search.
- [Share over time](https://londongraph.com/g/what-they-were-looking-for?view=share): How the recorded object mix changed across published months.
- [First to latest](https://londongraph.com/g/what-they-were-looking-for?view=first-last): Compare every recorded object in the first and latest available month.
- [Object × outcome](https://londongraph.com/g/what-they-were-looking-for?view=object-outcome): Count the jointly recorded object and outcome for the latest month. Caveat: Cells with fewer than ten searches are suppressed before publication.

## Citation guidance

Attribute the original publisher named above and identify LondonGraph as the visualisation and methodology layer. Do not describe live values as a historical census, and do not present placeholder values as observations.