The £450million National Crime Agency to launch tomorrow. Elite force of 5,000 officers will target the most dangerous criminals. Includes up to 400 graduates and trainees who work alongside force.
The most radical change to law enforcement for decades will be launched tomorrow – and The Mail on Sunday has been given the first insight into its mission to ‘attack’ Britain’s most serious and dangerous criminals.
The new £450?million National Crime Agency – already dubbed Britain’s FBI – is a 5,000-strong elite force with sweeping new powers to hunt down cyber criminals, drug barons, paedophile gangs and people-traffickers.
In an exclusive interview, Keith Bristow, the NCA’s first director-general, said: ‘I want criminals to fear coming to our attention. When our officers arrest them, I want the bottom to drop out of their world because they will know that we are going to bring them to justice and take their assets off them.’
Mr Bristow, 47, a former Chief Constable of Warwickshire Police, also revealed:
Officers will be trying to untangle the ‘dark web’ – a vast and murky unregulated area of the internet used by criminals.
Computer experts and other ‘specials’ from banks and blue-chip companies are ‘queueing up’ to lend their skills to his crusade.
Up to 400 graduates and other trainee investigators will cut their teeth not as local bobbies do by arresting shoplifters or vandals, but by helping to target Britain’s biggest criminal conspiracies. Others joining the NCA will have backgrounds in policing or as Customs officers.
An astonishing array of high-tech digital tools and CCTV cameras using face-recognition software will ultimately track criminals’ movements with greater accuracy – and without risk of the surveillance being detected.
An intelligence hub, officially called the Organised Crime Co-ordination Centre, will use ‘crime-mapping’ to amalgamate and analyse information from every police force, the NCA itself, and from the Security Services, MI5 and MI6.
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