Met Admits Resource Problem At Cybercrime Unit

The shocking lack of resources at the cybercrime unit of the Metropolitan Police Service has been confirmed by the Metropolitan Police Commissioner in a newspaper article at the weekend.

In an article for the Sunday Telegraph, Metropolitan Police commissioner Paul Stephenson wrote about the worrying lack of resources at the Metropolitan Police Central e-Crime Unit (PceU), and admitted that it is only able to deal with a tenth of the known criminals that regularly use computers for illegal purposes.

“We also know that, at any time, the Police Service is only actively targeting 11 percent of the 6,000 organised crime groups in England and Wales,” the police commissioner wrote.

He warned that there were disturbing signs that ‘traditional’ British organised crime is waking up to the profits and uses of e-crime.

Resource Problem

Stephenson also exposed the worryingly small number of officers assigned to combat online fraud and cybercrime on a day to day basis.

According to the Commissioner, only 15 percent of the 385 officers dedicated to online crime are investigating terrorism, fraud, identity theft and other serious non-personal crimes. This means that only 58 officers of the 385 total are actively investigating online fraud, identity theft etc.

The remaining 327 officers are said to be investigating child exploiters and tracking the online exchange of child pornography.

“Last year, PCeU cost about £2.75 million,” Commissioner Stephenson wrote. “It has been estimated that for every £1 spent on the Virtual Task Force, it has prevented £21 in harm from potential theft.”

Extra Funding Denied

The parlous state of funding for the PceU has been worrying the industry for some time now.

Back in June, eWEEK Europe UK reported that the unit would not be getting an extra £1 million funding boost from the Home Office in 2011. The Met warned at that time that without that additional funding, “the growth of our capability will be restricted.”

While Stephenson did not criticise the government’s budget cuts outright, he made it clear that the funding for the unit should not be overlooked. “The significance of the unit goes to the heart of the current debate about what policing should look like in an era of significant budget cuts,” he wrote.