SARs – a line in the sand?

It may simply confirm what most people in the industry knew or strongly suspected but Matthew Fleming’s report “UK Law Enforcement Agency Use and Management of Suspicious Activity Reports: Towards Determining the Value of the Regime” [1] is impressive for its depth and rigour - he had carte blanche to speak to everyone and seems to have done so in what must have been a packed 4+ months of research. He concludes that “[D]espite evidence of some important SAR-related successes, SARs appear to be under-utilised by most LEAs [law enforcement agencies].” Why is this?