BRITAIN: Britain rejected calls for a national police force similar to America's FBI, amid concern that a small regional force was ill-equipped to deal with one of the country's biggest ever missing persons hunt.
Over eleven days ago, Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman disappeared from the sleepy little town of Soham in central England and have not been seen since.
Their disappearance has generated huge media interest with an appeal from England soccer captain David Beckham and one newspaper group offering £1 million pound reward for information.
But the leads have dried up and the investigation by 300 Cambridgeshire police officers has come under fire. They have now called in Scotland Yard to review their inquiry.
Former senior officers said it showed that the police structure of 43 separate forces in England and Wales needed urgent reform.
"The system is close to melt-down," Mr John Stalker, former deputy chief constable of Greater Manchester Police told a UK newspaper.
"It is time for radical change - and the importance to the public of missing children investigations should force the pace of that change," he said
Cambridgeshire's newly appointed police chief was criticised for going on holiday while the search for the missing girls was still ongoing.
A taxi driver who said he saw two girls struggling with a man in a car around the time of their disappearance, said it had taken officers four days to question him. On Monday night the girls' distraught parents were told to prepare for the worst as forensic officers examined two mounds of freshly dug earth. It later emerged that the mounds were badger sets.
Finally, on Wednesday the detective in charge of the hunt took the unusual step of making a direct video appeal to a presumed abductor to contact him directly.
"I have to say I feel distinctly uneasy at how I see the Soham inquiry progressing," Mr Bob Taylor, a former detective superintendent, said.
He said a national squad similar to the FBI was needed for major cases.
But the Home Office said there were no plans for a national police force, nor any need to reform the National Crime Squad, which co-ordinates major inquiries into organised crime involving drugs and paedophilia.
"Setting up a single organised crime agency wouldn't be the answer," a Home Office spokeswoman said.
Chief Supt Kevin Morris, chairman of the police superintendents' association, agreed, saying a national force would not be practical or cost effective.
But he added: "Some forces, luckily, don't get enough major crimes for everybody to keep up to date.
The detective who led the inquiry into the murder of Sarah Payne in 2000, the last missing persons case to attract such huge publicity, blamed media pressure for hindering inquiries.
"We will reach the point where good people won't want to do this job because all they ever get is the criticism from brickbats," Mr Paul Whitehouse, the former chief constable of Sussex, told the BBC. - (Reuters)