Special Branch is a label customarily used to identify units responsible for matters of national security and intelligence in British, Commonwealth, Irish, and other police forces. A Special Branch unit acquires and develops intelligence, usually of a political or sensitive nature, and conducts investigations to protect the State from perceived threats of subversion, particularly terrorism and other extremist political activity.
The Home Office (HO), also known as the Home Department, is a ministerial department of the Government of the United Kingdom, responsible for immigration, security, and law and order. As such, it is responsible for policing in England and Wales, fire and rescue services in England, visas and immigration, and the Security Service (MI5). It is also in charge of government policy on security-related issues such as drugs, counter-terrorism, and ID cards. It was formerly responsible for Her Majesty's Prison Service and the National Probation Service, but these have been transferred to the Ministry of Justice.
The Australian Federal Police (AFP) is the national and principal federal law enforcement agency of the Australian Government with the unique role of investigating crime and protecting the national security of the Commonwealth of Australia. The AFP is an independent agency of the Department of Home Affairs and is responsible to the minister for home affairs and accountable to the Parliament of Australia. As of October 2019 the commissioner of the Australian Federal Police is Reece Kershaw, formerly the Northern Territory Police Commissioner.
Law enforcement in the United Kingdom is organised separately in each of the legal systems of the United Kingdom: England and Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland. Most law enforcement is carried out by police officers serving in regional police services within one of those jurisdictions. These regional services are complemented by UK-wide agencies, such as the National Crime Agency and the national specialist units of certain territorial police forces, such as the Specialist Operations directorate of the Metropolitan Police.
The Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) was a non-departmental public body of the Government of the United Kingdom which existed from 1 April 2006 until 7 October 2013. SOCA was a national law enforcement agency with Home Office sponsorship, established as a body corporate under Section 1 of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005. It operated within the United Kingdom and collaborated with many foreign law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
The European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation, better known under the name Europol, formerly the European Police Office and Europol Drugs Unit, is the law enforcement agency of the European Union (EU) formed in 1998 to handle criminal intelligence and combat serious international organised crime and terrorism through cooperation between competent authorities of EU member states. The Agency has no executive powers, and its officials are not entitled to arrest suspects or act without prior approval from competent authorities in the member states. Seated in The Hague, it comprised 1,065 staff in 2016.
The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) is the branch of a police force to which most plainclothes detectives belong in the United Kingdom and many Commonwealth nations. A force's CID is distinct from its Special Branch. The name derives from the CID of the Metropolitan Police, formed on 8 April 1878 by C. E. Howard Vincent as a re-formation of its Detective Branch. British colonial police forces all over the world adopted the terminology developed in the UK in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and later the police forces of those countries often retained it after independence. English-language media often use "CID" as a translation to refer to comparable organisations in other countries.
The Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC) is a law enforcement agency established by the Australian federal government on 1 July 2016, following the merger of the Australian Crime Commission (ACC) and CrimTrac. It has specialist investigative capabilities and delivers and maintains national information sharing systems.
The Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) is a law enforcement agency in Ireland. The CAB was established with powers to focus on the illegally acquired assets of criminals involved in serious crime. The aims of the CAB are to identify the criminally acquired assets of persons and to take the appropriate action to deny such people these assets. This action is taken particularly through the application of the Proceeds of Crime Act 1996. The CAB was established as a body corporate with perpetual succession in 1996 and is founded on the multi-agency concept, drawing together law enforcement officers, tax officials, social welfare officials as well as other specialist officers including legal officers, forensic analysts and financial analysts. This multi-agency concept is regarded by some as the model for other European jurisdictions.
The Kosovo Police is the national policing law enforcement agency of Kosovo.
An authorised firearms officer (AFO) is a British police officer who is authorised, and has been trained, to carry and use firearms. The designation is significant because in the United Kingdom most police officers do not routinely carry firearms, although they can be equipped with tasers. The only forces where officers are routinely armed are the Police Service of Northern Ireland, the Ministry of Defence Police, the Civil Nuclear Constabulary, Belfast Harbour Police and the Belfast International Airport Constabulary.
New Zealand's intelligence agencies and units have existed, with some interruption, since World War II. At present, New Zealand's intelligence community has approximately 550 employees, and has a combined budget of around NZ$145 million.
The GardaNational Bureau of Criminal Investigation (GNBCI) - formerly known as the Central Detective Unit (CDU) - is the main national criminal investigative branch of the Garda Síochána, the national police force of Ireland.
The counter-terrorism page primarily deals with special police or military organizations that carry out arrest or direct combat with terrorists. This page deals with the other aspects of counter-terrorism:
In many countries, particularly those with a federal system of government, there may be several law enforcement agencies, police or police-like organizations, each serving different levels of government and enforcing different subsets of the applicable law.
The Maritime Analysis and Operations Centre (MAOC), based in Lisbon, is an international agency set up to coordinate anti-drug trafficking action by several European Union states with financial support from the Prevention against Crime Programme of the European Union, European Commission – Directorate -General Home Affairs. The participating states are Portugal, Spain, United Kingdom, Ireland, France, the Netherlands and Italy. The centre has been active since 1 April 2006. The Agreement that established MAOC (N) states that the centre is to provide a forum for multi-lateral cooperation to suppress illicit drug trafficking by sea and air. The centre aims to use intelligence on drug smuggling operations, by air or sea, to apply the most suitable military and/or law enforcement teams to respond to situations that arise. Its area of operations is the eastern Atlantic, from the Cape of Good Hope in Southern Africa to the Norwegian Sea. The Lisbon headquarters is staffed by Country Liaison Officers (CLOs) representing the police, customs, military and maritime authorities of the participating European nations, as well as by permanent observer from the United States through the Joint Interagency Task Force South (JIATFS). The European Commission, Europol, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) are observers of the MAOC (N), as well as Canada, Cape Verde, Germany, Greece, and Morocco. MAOC (N) is headed by an executive director and guided by an executive board.
James Gamble, QPM, is a former Chief Police Officer and was the founding Chief Executive of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre in the United Kingdom. Mr Gamble is currently the CEO of the INEQE Safeguarding Group, the Independent Child Safeguarding Commissioner for the City of London and Hackney, formerly the City and Hackney Safeguarding Children Board; the first to be judged outstanding by Ofsted. He is also the Independent Chair of the Safeguarding Children Partnership in Bromley where he was part of the leadership team that drove their judgement from "inadequate" to "good", with "outstanding" leadership in two years.
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 in which it looks at the bigger picture across the UK, analysing how 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.
The Crime and Security Branch (CSB) – previously known as C3 – is responsible for the administration of national security, counter terrorism and serious crime investigations within the Garda Síochána, the national police force of Ireland. The section oversees intelligence relating to subversive, paramilitary and terrorism matters, conducts counter-intelligence, liaises with foreign law enforcement agencies, handles confidential informants, administers VIP and witness protection, monitors potential corrupt Garda officers and provides information on threats to the state to the Garda Commissioner and Government of Ireland.
