BIRKENHEAD POLICE STATION

The Force has set up a dedicated team to identify and investigate offenders who possess and distribute indecent images of children and to prosecute them when evidence becomes available. This team is called the Abusive Images Unit.

The team is managed by a Detective Inspector and consists of a Detective Sergeant and five Detective Constables and an Intelligence researcher.

The team has significant partnerships with other local and national Police services and we work closely with the Child Exploitation and online Protection Centre (CEOP) to investigate offenders regionally and share intelligence that can identify and lead to the prosecution of offenders both in this country and abroad.

Our investigations have already lead to the identification, arrest and conviction of a significant number of Internet offenders within the United Kingdom and abroad. As a direct result we have been able to secure the safety of some children and protect them from further abuse.

The Abusive Images Unit also works with partners in local education and the community to provide crime prevention advice to young people in relation to staying safe online and ensuring suspicious activity is notified to a responsible agency.

DCI John Armstrong from the Force Crime Operations Unit said, " The Abusive Images Unit is at the vanguard of tackling those offenders who use the Internet to distribute indecent images of children and who seek to exploit children. We are becoming more and more successful in identifying these types of offenders and bringing them into the public arena to account for their offending behaviour. We now have significant and well-established partnerships which means that sexual predators cannot hide any longer on the Internet. It is increasingly becoming only a matter of time before they are identified and called to account."