Relieving the Pressure On Police Resources

Private intelligence agencies, such as SIASS the North East's premier commercial technical support unit, are relieving the pressure on UK police resources, local government departments and other agencies.

Everyone in the UK understands that for sometime our local Governments and other agencies have been struggling for funding. Some have seen their budgets slashed during austerity measures. The public have been increasingly contacting private intelligence agencies, private investigators and detectives to assist them to find solutions and gather evidence on a range of issues.

The private intelligence agencies, such as SIASS, who have traditionally dealt with commercial organisations and more affluent individuals are finding more clients asking for assistance.

In recent months, we've had a significant number of requests for assistance with;

• nuisance neighbours,

• fly-tipping,

• welfare concerns of family,

• anti-social behaviour problems,

• and stalking/harassment issues,

Each of these above issues has had a common factor, the clients have approached traditional agencies (police, councils, housing associations) for help, before contacting us. In everyone of the cases that we took on, the client had been told by traditional agencies that there was nothing they can do unless they received quality evidence. This poses a problem for our clients who need support to undertake full or part (we don't recommend DIY investigations) of an evidence gathering investigation.

We appreciate that police resources (and those of other agencies) are at full capacity and they are unable to assign an investigative team to every report. That's where we can assist. SIASS have the resources to assign operators to pursue evidence gathering on behalf of the client. This gives our client a starting point to be able to have police and other relevant agencies fully investigate concerns. Once there is some viable, ethically collected, court admissible evidence, a full investigation can then be undertaken by those agencies responsible.

In a recent harassment issue, involving online threats of violence towards a minor, we were able to;

• collate the threats into a contemporaneous evidence log,

• gather background intelligence regarding the perpetrators,

• provide full names and addresses from open source, social media information,

• advise the victim of immediate personal safety procedures they could take,

This meant that the victim was able to go back to the police and provide details for the police to take immediate further action.

A recent client contact asked us to assist a group of neighbours to evidence the occurrence of anti-social behaviour happening regularly on the corner of their street. They had approached the social landlord and local council, along with the police, prior to contacting us. All agencies had said that they had no evidence to be able to prosecute those committing anti-social behaviour offences in the area.

SIASS were able to;

• mount a cover surveillance operation and film a number of incidents as they took place,

• covertly film and follow two illegally driven vehicles (no MOT, no tax) and provide residence information for the drivers,

• capture evidence of drug dealing in the area,

• provide signed statements from SIASS operators as professional witnesses who would be happy to give evidence in any court action that followed.

The residents were then able to take the footage, evidence logs and statements from the SIASS operators and hand them to all three agencies, for further action.

UK Police

Relieving the pressure on stretched public resources is something we are obviously happy to do, it isn't a long term solution. It certainly isn't a wide-scale solution either. We are one of the ethical and professional private intelligence agencies. What if a client facing issues as listed above does not contact a reputable private investigative service provider? What are the risks? Could situations be made worse? What if an agency, such as the police, refuse to accept the evidence gathered?

Additionally, we don't provide our services free of charge, clients pay for our time, resources and skill set.

As SIASS Managing Director, Sarah Saul has said, "How will this impact overall public satisfaction and confidence in the UK police service? Assisting clients, after they have been told they can't be helped by agencies that they expected would help them, means that clients often do express disappointment and increased dissatisfaction with these agencies. We explain that obviously we don't have the funding and resource constraints that many public agencies have, which is why we are able to focus on their issue. However, many tell us they have felt their concerns were originally dismissed by the original public agencies they approached for help."

We'll obviously continue to assist our clients to gather the information they require, but by relieving the pressure, are we helping to disguise process and funding issues that need addressing? Genuinely interested in your views.

For more information regarding SIASS private investigation services, please contact us.