[blunkett's bobbies] brown's stasi or community support

HM Inspectorate of Constabulary brought out reports on the PCSOs on September 16th, as you might recall, the key findings including:

- in West Midlands there were delays of up to a week before officers were sent to an incident. Some crimes were ignored for a day because details were put in the wrong pigeon hole in the police station.

- in West Mercia some police community support officers (PCSOs) had "little knowledge of the basic theory of problem solving;

- in Essex, neighbourhood teams were producing official statements "that were clearly not up to court standard", especially in cases of domestic violence.

- at least two forces - North Yorkshire and Cambridgeshire - had imposed a recruitment freeze to save money which will impact directly on frontline policing.

- there was a constant failure to use common sense in deploying PCSOs - Asian officers being sent to work in Polish areas and vice versa. Arabic speaking PCSOs being sent to work in predominantly Afro-Caribbean areas

- in North Yorkshire there was "some confusion regarding the deployment of PCSOs to particular incidents" - "real" police officers such as sergeants are being hugely outnumbered by PCSOs in some neihgbourhooed teams

- by 33:1 (Essex) 21:1 (Bolton) and 17:1 (Cambs) - in Manchester, opening times of some police stations were set around staff shift patterns rather than when officers are needed most.

- PCSOs are supposed to be the "eyes and ears" for police in communities yet in Hampshire, "there was no common understanding of what was meant by community intelligence".

- there was confusion over what role neighbourhood police teams play and a failure to consider what priorities are in an area.

Their main task is to target thugs but of course they complain that they have limited powers of arrest and detention:

"If you've got up to 100 youths in the park what's the point of having two or three PCSOs with no power?" one resident, Colin Pascoe, said. "That's a waste of resources as far as I'm concerned." Paula Newell, 51, added: "Having these people with no powers of arrest is totally pointless. "We are talking about the rule of law breaking down - it's absolutely ridiculous."

To recap on this - government reduces funding of police and police stations are rationalized, just as post offices and others services are. The economic downturn is blamed on international trends. To compensate for what the banks and government created, Blunkett brings in the PCSOs, in effect creating a low-trained force of amateurs to do high grade work.

When questioned about the quality of these officers and whether they go on to become mainstream police, the following exchange takes place:

Mr. Jenkins: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many community support officers have become full members of the police force. [132860] Mr. McNulty: This information is not centrally collected.

I'm on a learning curve on this one, rather than making judgements about the PCSOs. One commenter said:

I have seen PCSO's dealing with small groups of youths - 3 or 4 perhaps. They seemed to be chatting with them in an amiable manner. This is surely the function of the PCSOs, to get to know the people of the locality, and defuse trouble before it escalates.

There is another side as well. This from a police officer:

[The] numbers were supposed to be in addition to sworn police officers. What is actually happening is that they are starting to replace them and this is the prediction that they saw coming. Instead of a fully trained omnicompetent constable with a PCSO supporting them the public now only get the supporting act instead.

Then we get Johnathan Pearce's view:

I could not help notice the contrast between Reynolds' very American can-do attitude with the sort of pathetic, rule-obsessed attitude demonstrated by so-called police officers who failed to act, at least with great urgency, to prevent the drowning of a young lad. When I hear people talk about the erosion of civil society under the impact of officialdom, it is tragedies like this recent story that demonstrate what I mean.

Others are even blunter. Letters from a Tory:

Like many other people, I detest Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs). It’s not that they are nasty people or that they don’t do their jobs well - it’s just that there is absolutely no need to have them in the first place.

Bill Quango:

[T]he shopping centres I visit have between 6 and 50 security guards each. With in-house training and only a heavy radio and a sort of majorette uniform they manage to keep order and deal effectively with crime, accident, annoyance and illness. Evacuation,security,first aid, restrictions codes of conduct and parking. The Private sector pays for them because the police stopped coming. That is the danger trend. Private Police walking the streets.Private police in gated areas. Private Police in retail parks.

Yes, Bill, I am of a similar mind. The EU/Labour government are putting in Common Purpose "graduates" to take over "leadership" of the community when things go pear-shaped according to the programme, they have regional assemblies in place and Blunkett's brownshirts seem to me to be everything a police force should not be.

This looks dangerous.