- National Criminal Intelligence Service
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Not to be confused with Naval Criminal Investigative Service.
The National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS) was a United Kingdom policing agency set up as a separate body in April 1992 to centralise the gathering and distribution of intelligence on serious and organised criminal matters. NCIS was formed out of the National Drugs Intelligence Unit in the Home Office. Following the Police and Criminal Justice Act 2001, NCIS returned to direct funding by the Home Office in 2002 and was a non-departmental public body. On 1 April 2006 it was merged into the newly created Serious Organised Crime Agency.
NCIS provided the intelligence back-up to other agencies, such as the National Crime Squad, and concentrated on drugs, financial crime, immigration, firearms and organised crime. The organisation did not have a remit to deal with terrorism. Internationally, NCIS liaised with Interpol and Europol, and other international law enforcement networks.
Under section 2 of the Police Act 1997, the functions of NCIS were:
- to gather, store and analyse information in order to provide criminal intelligence;
- to provide criminal intelligence to police forces in Great Britain, the Police Service of Northern Ireland, the National Crime Squad and other law enforcement agencies; and
- to act in support of such police forces, the Police Service of Northern Ireland, the National Crime Squad and other law enforcement agencies carrying out their criminal intelligence activities.
Money laundering reports were made to NCIS. The disclosure criteria were expanded by the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, and NCIS received around 100,000 disclosures in 2003, 60 per cent more than in 2002 and over triple the number in 2001.
NCIS employed staff directly, but also seconded staff from over 25 partner agencies such as the police, HM Customs and Excise, HM Immigration Service, the Inland Revenue, the Identity and Passport Service, the Medicines Control Agency, the Financial Services Authority and during Operation Trinity, a long running specialist NCIS serious organised crime investigation, MI5 and the CPS, beginning in 1992 the United States Customs Service detailed Special Agent/Criminal Investigators to the NCIC financial intelligence branch, the detail named Operation Centerpoint consisted of one Special Agent detailed to London for a three month temporary duty. Operation Centerpoint continued through 1993 when US law enforcement participation in the program was discontinued due to budget constraints.
NCIS had its headquarters at New Scotland Yard in London, and during August 1992 moved to new facilities at Spring Gardens on the South bank of the Thames, with five regional offices in Birmingham, Bristol, Glasgow, Manchester and Wakefield, and a satellite office in Belfast. The service also operated in foreign territories with agents liaising and working directly from the government offices of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO).
Elements of NCIS were later incorporated into the Association of Chief Police Officers Vehicle Crime Intelligence Service.
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