The new service is designed to make it easier and quicker for everyone to report fraud and cybercrime and significantly improve the speed and quality of information provided to law enforcement partners, boosting their chances of successful prosecutions. Reports made to the new service, as well as those reports made to CIFAS and UK Finance, will continue to be sent to the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB), based within City of London Police, for analysis. The centralised intelligence function allows for fraud and cybercrime reports from across the country to be linked, and for a better ..read more

Last year, the force received 3,539 reports of sexual offences across Avon and Somerset, 84 per cent of which were reported by women and girls. As part of this operation, plain-clothed officers will patrol busy night-time areas to identify those displaying signs of predatory behaviour, such as loitering, harassment and following lone women. “If such behaviour is spotted, uniformed officers will intervene, checking that everyone involved is safe and preventing any further offences from taking place,” the force said. Detective Chief Inspector Richard Marsh said: “This operation will allow office ..read more

The Home Office says the “urgent, targeted changes” made to the Act will ensure laws keep pace with “rapidly changing technology and modern threats to national security”. The Investigatory Powers (Amendment) Act, which received Royal Assent on Thursday (April 25), will also increase protection of the privacy of British citizens by strengthening the “world-leading safeguards” within the 2016 Act. “As technology has rapidly advanced and the type of threats the UK faces evolved, it is crucial the UK stays ahead of our adversaries to keep the British people safe,” said the Home Office. “The new Ac ..read more

Organised criminals, including drug dealers, fraudsters and terrorists, are known to increasingly use cryptoassets to launder the proceeds of crime and raise money. The NCA’s National Assessment Centre estimates that illicit crypto transactions linked to the UK were likely to have reached at least £1.2 billion in 2021, if not significantly higher. The Government has now updated proceeds of crime and terror legislation, making it easier for UK law enforcement to effectively investigate, seize and recover illicit cryptoassets. Among the changes, police will no longer be required to make an arres ..read more

A three-day misconduct hearing, which concluded this week, found former PC Luke Stokes, previously attached to the Metropolitan Police Service’s (MPS) MO6 public order planning, had breached the standards of professional behaviour in respect of discreditable conduct, honesty and integrity, duties and responsibilities, and authority, respect and courtesy. The panel ruled he would have been dismissed without notice if he was still serving. Stokes was arrested by officers from British Transport Police (BTP) on April 13, 2022, after a passenger reported the former officer had sent a sexually expli ..read more

Latest figures for the year ending December 2023 show there were 430,104 shoplifting offences recorded by forces, up by more than a third (37 per cent) on the 315,040 offences in the previous 12 months. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said this is the highest figure since current police recording practices began for the year ending March 2003. Superintendent Andy Sidebotham, College of Policing lead for local policing, said: “Retail Crime is never victimless and can be accompanied by assaults and threats of violence. This increase in shoplifting is worrying and we know there is a lot ..read more

Chief Superintendent David Powell’s behaviour was described as “inappropriate”, “bullyish” and “aggressive” by officers at the scene. A disciplinary hearing ruled this week that the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary officer would have been dismissed without notice for gross misconduct had he not retired from the force in March this year. The IOPC began its investigation after receiving a conduct referral from the force in September 2022. It was established that on September 11, 2022, Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary officers attended a report of a domestic incident in Kings Wort ..read more

It received 390 online hate crime reports, a 79 per cent decrease since the week before and down significantly from the first week high of more than 7,000 reports. Of these 390 online reports, 356 were reported anonymously. An additional 23 reports were made via telephone and Contact Us. There were 26 non-crime hate incidents recorded in week three – the same number as was recorded in the same week last year, prior to the new legislation being introduced this month. Police Scotland’s third weekly summary on hate crime and incident reporting also shows the number of reports meeting the threshol ..read more

“Opportunistic” predators strike while children are online on phones and devices often used within the family home, says the IWF. The new data from the IWF reveals thousands of images and videos of three to six-year-old children who have been groomed, coerced and tricked into sexually abusive acts, are now being found on the open internet. The analysis, published on Tuesday (April 23), shows for the first time how these young children are now being targeted by internet predators who manipulate them into sexual activities. The abuse, which analysts have seen ranging from sexual posing and mastu ..read more

The Performance and Accountability Framework outlines 173 measures across five themes – Trust and Confidence; Threat, Harm and Risk; Prevention, Problem Solving and Proactivity; Our People; and Enabling Services. Chief Constable Jo Farrell said the  framework will illustrate performance more clearly but stressed “it is not about chasing targets”. The framework has been designed to better understand and explain Police Scotland’s level of service, inform how it deploys resources and enable effective scrutiny and benchmarking to drive a culture of accountability and continuous improvement. S ..read more