National Crime Agency
The National Crime Agency (NCA) is a national law enforcement agency in the United Kingdom. It is the UK's lead agency against organised crime; human, weapon and drug trafficking; cybercrime; and economic crime that goes across regional and international borders, but it can be tasked to investigate any crime. The NCA has a strategic role as part of which it looks at serious crime in aggregate across the UK, especially analysing how organised criminals are operating and how they can be disrupted. To do this, it works closely with regional organised crime units (ROCUs), local police forces, and other government departments and agencies.
This article is about the United Kingdom law enforcement agency. For the former Australian agency, see National Crime Authority.National Crime Agency
NCA
Leading the UK's fight to cut serious and organised crime
7 October 2013
£859.9 million (2023/24)[1]
65,182,178[2]
Full in England and Wales and Northern Ireland; limited in Scotland
1–6 Citadel Place, Tinworth Street, London SE11 5EF
1,791
4,194
- Graeme Biggar, Director General
It is the UK's point of contact for foreign agencies such as Interpol, Europol and other international law enforcement agencies. On a day-to-day basis, the NCA assists police forces and other law enforcement agencies (and vice versa) under voluntary assistance arrangements. In extremis, the NCA Director General has the power to direct a chief officer of a police force to give directed assistance with NCA tasks where necessary (but only with consent of the relevant Secretary of State).[3] The NCA itself can also be directed by the Secretary of State to give directed assistance to a police force or other law enforcement agency.[4]
It was established in 2013 as a non-ministerial government department,[5] replacing the Serious Organised Crime Agency and absorbed the previously separate Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) as one of its commands.[6] It also assumed a number of responsibilities from other law enforcement agencies.
The NCA has also assumed a range of functions from the National Policing Improvement Agency, which has been scrapped as part of the government's changes to policing.[7] These include a specialist database relating to injuries and unusual weapons, expert research on potential serial killers, and the National Missing Persons Bureau. The agencies going into the NCA had a combined budget of £812m, yet the new agency only had £464m in its first year—a decrease of 43%.[8] Some of the responsibilities of the former UK Border Agency (now Immigration Enforcement and Border Force) relating to border policing also became part of the NCA. Like its predecessor SOCA, the NCA has been dubbed the "British FBI" by the media.[3]
The NCA's leadership team sets the Agency's strategic direction and provides senior operational oversight. Executive and non-executive directors bring a wealth of experience and expertise from across policing, government and the private sector.
As of October 2021, the Director General is Graeme Biggar.[9]
Challenges[edit]
The NCA faces several challenges. The first of these is the scale of the growing problem facing them. At the end of 2014 UK law enforcement estimated there were 5,800 organised crime groups – comprising some 40,600 individuals. This is an increase of three hundred organised crime groups and 3,500 people on the year before. The National Crime Agency (NCA) estimates that there are as many as 50,000 people in the UK involved in the downloading and viewing of indecent images online. The Director General of the NCA has suggested that the British public cannot expect every person viewing indecent images to enter the criminal justice system – not least because of the sheer scale of the problem. The NCA received 12,505 referrals from the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children in its first 12 months, compared to 9,855 in 2012, an increase of almost 27 per cent. Tackling modern slavery is another area that the Home Secretary has identified as requiring more effort. The Home Office's Chief Scientific Adviser estimates that there may have been as many as 13,000 potential victims of modern slavery in the UK in 2013. This figure was increased in August 2017 to "tens of thousands of victims".[38] Most will rely on the services of organised criminal groups at some point in their journey to the UK.[39]
In addition to this the NCA has been tasked with the Rotherham investigation into child sex exploitation. According to the NCA there are 3,300 lines of enquiry, around 1,400 victims and 300 suspects.
The second challenge, of funding and resources, links with the first challenge. Although the NCA budget is half a billion pounds, in proportion to the scale of the problem it is small. The combined budget of previous agencies and units that make up the NCA was almost a billion pounds, so the agency has had an almost 50% cut before its creation.[8] The NCA has 5000 staff only around 1250 of which are investigators, again small when faced with the problem. For the Rotherham investigation the NCA has had to bring in agency staff who are ex-police to assist with the scale of the investigation.
Thirdly there is the challenge of the "failure" of its predecessor agencies, SOCA and the National Crime squad and the fact that its success needs to be judged over years and not months due to the nature of the threat. SOCA was criticised for poor management and that some staff had poor investigation skills due to not working in law enforcement before. It is suggested that around 300 police detectives left SOCA due to this. With the NCA having the same staff this could be an issue. The NCA has already been criticised for not seizing enough assets (even though they seized more than SOCA in their last year of operation[40] as well as using a search warrant that was judged to be illegal after staff at the agency were "deliberately trying to stretch the boundaries imposed upon such investigation agencies by the statutory scheme under which they operate". The judge Mr Justice Hickinbottom stated though "This case smacks of incompetence, not bad faith."[41]
Notable operations[edit]
On 22 May 2014 at around 22:50, NCA officers were involved in a shootout in Tottenham.[56] Several shots were fired, including from NCA officers. Two men were arrested at the scene by the NCA for attempted murder and possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life. The Metropolitan Police arrived and arrested a third man for possession of a firearm.[57][58] This is believed to be the first incident in which NCA officers fired shots.
On 25 May 2014 at 00:00 hrs, a second NCA operation was carried out in Tottenham, along with officers from the Metropolitan Police, after the NCA received intelligence about the earlier shoot out. Two more men were arrested, one for attempted murder and possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life and the other for assisting an offender, after their car was stopped by armed officers. One shot was fired by a Metropolitan Police officer during the operation.[59]
In May 2014, the NCA conducted a major operation that resulted in the seizing of more than 100 kg of cocaine from a Greek bulk freighter in Scotland. The ship had been returning from Colombia; the operation resulted in the arrest of three men.[60]
In July 2014, the NCA with partners jointly disrupted the "Shylock" banking trojan believed to have infected at least 30,000 computers.[61]
Also in July 2014, the NCA co-ordinated the arrest of 660 suspected paedophiles. 39 of those arrested were registered sex offenders, but the majority had not previously come to the attention of law enforcement. 400 children are believed to have been protected by this operation, which included apprehending several individuals who had unsupervised access to children such as doctors, teachers and care workers.[62][63][64]
In November 2016, the NCA began a campaign, including releasing a video,[65] to educate the public on sextortion, providing advice on protecting oneself from being subject to sextortion and how to respond to a case of online blackmail.[66]
On 2 July 2020, the NCA reported it had co-ordinated the largest law enforcement operation of its kind in the UK when it announced the results of Operation Venetic. Working with all the police forces of the UK and other law enforcement bodies, officers made 746 arrests and seized £54 million of drug money, 77 firearms, 1,800 rounds of ammunition, 4 hand grenades, 55 high value (possibly stolen) cars and 2 tonnes of illegal drugs. The operation was possible after an international law enforcement team cracked the encryption of a mobile phone instant messaging service from EncroChat. Law enforcement in France and the Netherlands also carried out related operations with the assistance of Europol. Home Secretary Priti Patel said: "This operation demonstrates that criminals will not get away with using encrypted devices to plot vile crimes under the radar. The NCA's relentless targeting of these gangs has helped to keep us all safe. I congratulate them and law enforcement partners on this significant achievement".[67]
On 20 February 2024 the NCA, in collaboration with Europol and other law enforcement agencies, announced that it had seized websites and infrastructure belonging to the ransomware group LockBit.[68] Over 1,000 decryption keys were obtained, with the victims of the attacks to be contacted about the decryption of their data.[69]
