Since the disbanding of the National High Tech Crime Unit
(NHTCU) in 2006 there has been no national policing on high tech
crime issues on the same scale.
Last October the Police Central E-Crime Unit (PCeU) was set up
in London's Metropolitan Police force but attracted criticism over
a perceived lack of resources. Critics doubted whether it would be
able to provide national policing on a £7 million budget.
Now ACPO's lead officer on e-crime, Janet Williams, has said
that nationally-coordinated action boosting regional expertise is
essential to fight the growing problem of e-crime.
She said that ACPO was "actively pursuing" the idea of the
"brigading of specialist e-crime resources from forces in each
region into collaborative e-crime hubs".
"This follows the model successfully implemented in some other
areas of specialist policing, bringing together a critical mass of
e-crime specialists within each region to create a centre of
excellence in e-crime policing," she said.
ACPO's yet-to-be-finalised strategy on e-crime also reportedly
plans to train all police officers in how to deal with cybercrime
in an attempt to tackle massive and growing online fraud and other
digital crimes.
Williams said that policing in the area is currently not good
enough. "This strategy is designed to assist law enforcement in
building a response to this very real challenge. We are starting
from a low base and there is much to be done," she said.
"This strategy is the first stage in developing a more
consistent approach to e-crime across UK police forces, increasing
the skills and capacity for law enforcement officers to tackle such
criminality and to mainstream e-Crime into everyday policing and
law enforcement activities," she said.
In its response to a House of Lords report in 2007 on policing
the Home Office admitted that the disbanding of the NHTCU meant
that e-crime was not being adequately addressed.
“We know that [computer] crime is not a problem that sits
comfortably within local policing structures, and that historically
most forces have underinvested in their capacity to respond
effectively to it,” it said.
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