Expand the Paedophile Online Investigation Team

At the start of his term the Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) had identified the changing nature of crime in recent years, including cyber-crime and child sexual abuse, continuing to increase and placing significant demand on policing.

Specialist teams and capability are needed to investigate such offences. Having facilitated the creation of the Paedophile Online Investigation Team (POLIT) during his first term of office, the Commissioner pledged to increase the size of the POLIT to help meet the huge increase in demand for Dorset Police.

The POLIT sits within the Child Abuse Investigation Team and works as the Force’s specialist response to subjects who view and/or distribute indecent images of children, or who groom, incite and/or facilitate sexual activity with children through use of the internet.

POLIT officers proactively seek out offenders whilst also having responsibility for reactive referrals from the community, National Crime Agency (NCA) and other law enforcement agencies throughout the world. Their work also contains referrals from companies such as KIK, Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter regarding users sharing IIOC, alongside national operations targeting known nominals and organised crime groups.

The PCC highlighted this as one of eight commitments to have been delivered within the first 100 days of his term of office and three additional officers had joined the POLIT by September 2016.