Post: 31 January 2012
This weekend’s report that Richard Branson’s Virgin Media “secretly” agreed to pay the Met Police’s overtime bill for investigation of a television set-top box scam prompted a number of outraged comments about private policing.
Jenny Jones, Green Party candidate for London mayor and a member of the Metropolitan Police Authority for 12 year until its abolition this January, is quoted as saying: “I have never heard of this. It’s like private policing and I am really shocked that somebody thought this was OK.”
Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, said: “Times may be tough but that’s no excuse for turning the police into hired guns for those wealthy enough to pursue crimes against them.”
All this story really illustrates is how little real scrutiny politicians and the media give to police procedures until there’s a celebrity or a scandal involved. In fact there is nothing new about this type of private sector subsidy for police work in London, particularly for investigation of fraud.
Section 26 of the Police Act 1996 gives police a broad authorisation to charge for “provision of special services”:
The chief officer of police of a police force may provide, at the request of any person, special police services at any premises or in any locality in the police area for which the force is maintained, subject to the payment to the police authority of charges on such scales as may be determined by that authority.
Another recent (and relatively benign) example of this practice is the announcement yesterday of a “partnership” arrangement between the Met Police and the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) under which the charity will contribute a “significant amount of money” towards the operation of the Met’s Wildlife Crime Unit.
Less well known and arguably more significant is the long-standing relationship between the City of London Police and financial services industry. For the past nine years British banks have sponsored the Dedicated Cheque and Plastic Card Unit (DCPCU), a squad of officers seconded from the City of London Police and the Met Police.
According to the City of London Police, the DCPCU is based on an operating model “where the priorities are set by industry, performance is transparent and reviewed regularly but the operational independence of the police is preserved.”
Last year the City of London Police announced the formation of a second unit, consisting of 35 specialist fraud detectives and police support staff, to tackle insurance fraud. This new unit is to be funded by the Association of British Insurers (ABI), the main membership body for UK insurance companies.
The ABI’s funding contribution to the new unit has been reported at £9m. The work of the unit will be directed by a panel made up of the City of London Police, the Association of British Insurers, the Insurance Fraud Bureau (an industry body) and the Home Office’s National Fraud Authority.
The main arguments for these arrangements are that for certain types of crime police need access to specialised expertise from business and the third sector, and that private funding enables police to carry out work they would not otherwise be able to afford within their operational budgets, particularly at a time when resources are tight.
The concern is that these arrangements enable specific organisations or sectors to pay for preferential access to police resources. This is against a background of reductions in police numbers and the steady increase in the use of private security firms for what would previously have been considered police functions.
The low profile of this issue to date may indicate private funding is not yet a widespread practice in UK policing. However in the United States, the source of most fashions in modern policing, so-called Paid Detail Units are firmly embedded in big-city police forces. New York City’s Paid Detail Unit, which provides security for Stock Exchange and Wall Street corporations, has been in operation since 1998. Similar units operate in New Orleans, Los Angeles and San Francisco.