Tuesday 24 April 2007, 3:12 PM
Police told: Resign to join SOCA
Word reaches us at Infosec of unrest among police about the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA). To join SOCA, which effectively supplants the National High Tech Crime Unit, it appears that police have to resign and become civil servants working a 37.5-hour week.
We hear that police do have their salaries protected when they resign to join SOCA, which succinctly describes itself as an executive non-departmental public body sponsored by, but operationally independent from, the Home Office. "The powers that be are not best pleased that the people in charge of our national security might all have to go home at 5.30 on a particularly bad day," comments our source.
This issue might help explain the drubbing that SOCA received in a report written in January by detective chief inspector Charlie McMurdie of the Met's specialist crime directorate.
We hear that police do have their salaries protected when they resign to join SOCA, which succinctly describes itself as an executive non-departmental public body sponsored by, but operationally independent from, the Home Office. "The powers that be are not best pleased that the people in charge of our national security might all have to go home at 5.30 on a particularly bad day," comments our source.
This issue might help explain the drubbing that SOCA received in a report written in January by detective chief inspector Charlie McMurdie of the Met's specialist crime directorate.


