Hi there. I'm creating a character for a detective story and I'm just wondering could a former MI6 field agent realistically join the London Metropolitan Police? If so, would they have to tell the Metropolitan Police about their former line of work? thanks guys.
It depends. Is not M16 kind of like the CIA in the USA? If that is the case, then M16 outranks metro police anyway. So whether he discloses his past work with M16 or not is at the discretion of M16. If they have reason not to they won't permit him to. And if he knows what's good for him he won't go against them. Opposing a national intelligence agency can result in some rather inconvienient things happening. To him.
Good question. I'm not sure, but I think that it would depend in what post in the police force he'd be placed in, in regards to the post he had in the MI6 agency. For example if he is a diplomat or even a field intelligence officer in MI6, then most probably he studied geopolitics and was trained upon diplomacy. This has nothing to do with police training or even if it does, I can't imagine in which aspects. I'm just speaking about a realistic scenario. If your agent is a James Bond super spy, then sure, why not?
its not really a case of outranking the police - the intelligence service are parallel in the Uk so its not a case of seniority. as an M16 officer he'd have signed the official secrets act so he wouldn't be able to discuss his previous work with his colleagues, but it is likely that the higher up officers the met would know. For everyone else M16 would provide him with a legend (a cover story) usually that he'd been a civil servant in the home office. (that said cops aren't stupid so a lot of them would probably know anyway) I'd recommend having a look at Kilo 17 by Harry Ferguson which is an autobiography of how MI6 officer left the service and joined the customs and excise investigation division. Two other points a) on nomenclature if you work for MI6 you are an intelligence officer, an agent is a foreign national who you recruit to spy for you. b) MI6 doesn't tend to have the action men wet work field officers - they use soldiers on detachment from the special forces (SAS/SBS) for that sort of thing, a field officer would typically be pretty boring he'd spend his life in the field trying to recruit foreign nationals to spy for the UK. If you want him to have a background of fighting terrorists and undercover ops and so forth, you'd be better off making him an MI5 officer (security service)
He would be bound by the Official Secrets Act for any sensitive work that he had done. EDIT: Moose beat me to it.
Very possible, yes. Though, many PDs prefer to not hire ex-military guys. Why? Hard to deprogram the "kill first, ask questions later" mentality.
