The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Command, or CEOP Command, is a command of the UK's National Crime Agency, and is tasked to work both nationally and internationally to bring online child sex offenders, including those involved in the production, distribution and viewing of child abuse material, to the UK courts. The centre was formed in April 2006 as the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, and was absorbed into the NCA on 7 October 2013 by the Crime and Courts Act 2013.
Purpose and operations
CEOP combines police powers with expertise from the business sector, government, specialist charities and other interested organisations.
The CEOP's Home Office funding was frozen in 2010 and reduced by 10% over the subsequent three years. Staff numbers were increased during this period according to the CEOP, though former employees dispute this. In 2012–13 the budget was £6 million and there were 109 posts, which included 13 seconded police officers. Additional money and resources came from the NSPCC, Google, Microsoft and BAE Systems Detica.
Global work
The CEOP Centre is also a partner in an international law enforcement alliance – the Virtual Global Taskforce. This was set up in 2004 and provides an international alliance of law enforcement agencies across Australia, the US and Canada as well as Interpol in bringing a global policing response to censoring the Internet.
Faculties
The centre is split into three faculties; Intelligence, Harm Reduction and Operations. Each faculty is supported by teams covering governance, communications, partnerships and corporate services. The intelligence faculty receive intelligence of online and offline offenders; all reports made through the centre's website, and ThinkUKnow are dealt with at any time of day so that law enforcement action can be taken. The Harm Reduction faculty manage Public Awareness campaigns and educational programmes, including the ThinkUKnow education programme, which is currently being used in UK schools. The Operations Faculty aims to tackle both abusers and those who exploit children for financial gain. Web browser integration is available via a CEOP browser extension for Firefox, Google Chrome and a customised Internet Explorer.
Director
Johnny Gwynne is the Director of NCA-CEOP. Before joining the NCA Johnny was a serving Chief Officer with Police Scotland and had previously been Deputy Director General of the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency. He was seconded to the NCA in June 2013 and was Deputy Director of the Organised Crime Command before competing for and being appointed to the role of Director of the CEOP Command. Previous heads of CEOP include Jim Gamble and Peter Davies.
Prosecutions
CEOP gained its first successful prosecution in June 2006, when Lee Costi, 21, of Haslemere, Surrey, was sentenced at Nottingham Crown Court where he admitted grooming schoolgirls for sex, as well as possession of indecent images of children. Costi was caught when a Nottingham girl told her mother about his chatroom messages. Judge Jonathan Teare sentenced Costi to a total of nine years in prison. Following this, in June 2007, Timothy Cox was jailed at a court in Buxhall, Suffolk, following a 10-month operation by CEOP Officers, as well as other Virtual Global Taskforce Members, leading to 700 new suspects being followed up by law enforcement agencies around the world. The CEOP claims to have disrupted or dismantled 262 sex-offender networks between 2006 and 2010, and it says inquiries by its online investigators have led to more than 1,000 arrests during that period.
In September 2015, gross misconduct notices were served on four police officers who had held management roles in CEOP. The actions were part of an Independent Police Complaints Commission investigation into a 16-month delay in passing on information about 2,345 British child abuse suspects which had been received in 2012 from the Toronto Police Service. A spokesman for the IPCC said: "Two of the officers have retired since the incident, one officer remains at the NCA and one officer who was on secondment from Lincolnshire Police has since returned there. All four notices are for failing to adequately progress and manage the referral by Toronto Police from Project Spade. The investigation remains ongoing." The information received from Canada included details about doctor Myles Bradbury, who was subsequently imprisoned for 22 years for sexual assaults on 18 child patients at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge, and Martin Goldberg, the deputy head of Thorpe Hall School in Southend, who was found dead the day after he was interviewed by police about images of children undressing in changing rooms which had been found in his possession.
