Police UK API MCP Server

Overview

The Police UK API MCP Server bridges the gap between AI assistants and the rich, publicly available data hosted by the UK Police. By exposing 21 distinct tools that mirror every major endpoint of the official police.uk API, it allows developers to pull granular crime statistics, force details, neighbourhood boundaries, and stop‑and‑search records directly into conversational agents. This eliminates the need for custom HTTP clients, authentication handling, and data parsing logic—everything is wrapped in a type‑safe, error‑aware MCP interface that Claude and other MCP‑compatible assistants can consume out of the box.

What problem does it solve? Many AI projects require real‑time, location‑based policing information to answer user queries such as “What crimes have occurred in my neighbourhood?” or “Which police force covers this address?”. Traditionally, developers would need to handle OAuth, rate‑limiting, pagination, and JSON transformation for each endpoint. The MCP server abstracts these complexities: a single command () launches a local MCP service that registers all tools, automatically manages request throttling to respect the official API limits, and guarantees consistent response schemas. This speeds up prototyping and reduces runtime errors caused by schema drift.

Key capabilities include:

• Street‑level crime retrieval with optional date filtering, enabling agents to provide up‑to‑date incident reports for a specific coordinate or radius.
• Neighbourhood mapping tools that return boundary coordinates, policing priorities, and scheduled events—useful for community‑focused applications.
• Force‑level insights such as senior officer rosters and force metadata, allowing assistants to answer “Who runs the Metropolitan Police?” or “Which force covers this postcode?”.
• Stop‑and‑search analytics broken down by area, location, or force, supporting investigations into policing practices and public safety discussions.
• Built‑in type safety and error handling that surface meaningful messages to the user when a request fails or data is missing.

Real‑world scenarios span civic tech dashboards, local news outlets reporting on crime trends, or safety apps that alert residents about recent incidents. A chatbot could guide a user through locating their neighbourhood team, or an investigative journalist could query crime outcomes for a specific offence. Because the server is natively compatible with MCP‑enabled tools like Claude Desktop, integration requires only a configuration entry—no additional SDKs or API keys.

Unique advantages stem from its lightweight, zero‑dependency launch model and strict adherence to the police.uk rate limits. Developers can spin up a local instance with , ensuring that every request is throttled appropriately, preventing accidental service disruption. The server’s modular design also means new police.uk endpoints can be added with minimal effort, keeping the MCP ecosystem up‑to‑date as the official API evolves.