A British FBI Remains as Elusive as the X-Files

UK Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood is shaking up the police service with plans to create a “British FBI.” Don’t hold your breath for an elite corps of glamorous, technically brilliant and morally serious agents who will uncover vast conspiracies and save the nation from catastrophic threats in the mythical, TV-version manner of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation. This is at least the third time in two decades a UK government has proclaimed a British FBI. The label may stick no better this time. Still, the plan has its merits.

The creation of a National Police Service is just one aspect of an overhaul that Mahmood calls, optimistically, the most radical program of police reform in 200 years. It may not be that, but it is far reaching. The NPS will take over responsibility for counter-terrorism, serious and organized crime and large-scale fraud — absorbing a plethora of bodies including the National Crime Agency (another onetime “British FBI”), the College of Policing (which sets professional standards) and the National Police Chiefs’ Council. Among other changes, the government proposes to reduce the 43 regional police forces by perhaps two-thirds, give the home secretary the power to fire chief constables and appoint a national police commissioner.