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Comment by moomin | Hacker News Reader

A little background: the guys who sent the letter are PIPCU, a new department with funding for two years who are undoubtedly keen to get results quickly and cheaply.

A weirdness of PIPCU is that they're City of London police, not London Metropolitan Police as you'd expect for a department with such a wide remit.

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Note for Americans: there's no equivalent of "federal" police, it's handled by the local or regional authority. The "Met" end up with most of the national-level jobs like anti-terrorism.

PIPCU is a bit odd and new, and clearly looking to make a mark. They might reasonably complain that London police have no authority over them, and they'd be right; this is really a problem for ICANN who are ultimately threatening the registrars.

What is the difference between City of London police and London Metro police? (US resident, my only time in London was a quick drunken jaunt through SOHO on a long layover)

EDIT: Thank you all for informing me!

CGPGrey did a pretty interesting video a while back that explains the difference: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrObZ_HZZUc

I would think it's the distinction between the "City of London" (just the city itself) and the "London Metropolitan Area" (the city and surrounding sprawl).

"The City" is a tiny little slice with something like one hundred residents. It bears zero relation to London, the London Urban Area, the London Metro Area, or the London Municipal Area.

7400 at the last census (2011), but many thousands of workers during the day.

What's 7300 human lives between friends?

In fact the City of London is a tiny part of the city of London, and only one part of the centre (the north-east). It's the area that was originally defended by a wall in Roman times.

City of London is the financial district, a city within a city. Most of the voters there are companies and it is administered by a corporation. Dick Whittington ran it for a bit with a cat that liked sturdy footwear. It is weird.

The London Metropolitan Police (aka “Scotland Yard” although I don’t think anyone in London uses that term anymore) is the police force of Greater London, excluding the City of London which is basically the financial district of London (famously called the “Square Mile” for obvious reasons). It also has some nationwide responsibilities, such as counter-terrorism.

The City of London Police is the police force of the City of London only. Given that there are less than 8,000 people living in the City of London but more than 300,000 people work there (many of them very well paid), they specialise in white collar crime.

>here are less than 8.000 people living in the City of London but more than 300.000 people work there

That's quite fascinating.

It's "just" a business district within London, leaving aside a couple of millennia of history. London comprises the City and 32 boroughs, somewhat similarly to the way New York is made up of five boroughs, one of which is also called "New York" in some contexts.

City of London is like a borough of London. That would be like the Manhattan Police vs the NYPD.

More accurately it would be like the Manhattan Financial District Police vs the NYPD. The actual City of London is tiny.

Sidenote: SOHO is in New York. Soho is in London.

Edit: ok, so the one in New York is SoHo. Close enough.

Far and away the most stunning thing I saw when I visited London as a tourist in 1979 was the wall around The City of London. This is the ancient wall that at one point protected the city from attack. Why was it stunning? Because we walk up to the wall and look down a deep ditch of about twenty(?) feet to view the top of the wall. From the go go American point of view where things are transient and everything is new, to realize I was standing on the results of two thousand plus(?) years of human habitation, which had slowly raised the level of the earth all around that much, gave me a visceral sense of my connection with human history.

The strangest thing is that the City of London is very much like a corporation. A business with policing powers over other businesses...?

Just because it's called "City of London Corporation" does not mean it's the same as a public limited company with shareholders. It's basically a local authority with an unusual name and history(+). Of course it's very pro-establishment, but that's a function of its electorate.

PIPCU is new and a little unusual, although there's plenty of precedent for having special police units for complicated crime and they sit next to the Fraud bureau in City police units. It's a bit of an escalation - previously it was local Trading Standards who would handle piracy (e.g. people selling copied DVDs at the local market)

(+) How old? Over 1000 years, its origin is unclear.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Municipal_corporation

http://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/about-the-city/who-we-are/Pag...

See the Reedy Creek Improvement District, for a US analog:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reedy_Creek_Improvement_Distric...

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