Taking the PCSO?
Community support officers: tackling crime or wasting time?
Recently the local media have questioned the usefulness of police community support officers (PCSOs). As New Labour’s main response to mounting concern about crime, it is no surprise that local councillor Val Smith and Oxford Labour’s deputy leader Ed Turner were quick to rise to the defence of PCSOs in letters to the local press. But are these auxiliary police officers with limited powers a good use of taxpayers’ money? IWCA councillor Stuart Craft asks if PCSOs really serve the interests of Leys residents.
Despite the IWCA’s success over the years in tackling nightmare neighbours, hard drug dealing and other antisocial crime, these problems are, to an extent, still with us on the Leys and efforts to improve our community are likely to continue for some time to come.
The police, council and government crow about increased policing resources for the estate but the reality experienced by residents is that the police are hardly ever seen and rarely take an interest if contacted. If any extra policing has been provided for Blackbird Leys then it has been in the form of police community support officers (PCSOs).
PCSOs don’t appear to have any more powers than the ordinary person. They can only make citizens’ arrests and are instructed to avoid confrontation with those carrying out criminal or antisocial acts.
The police say that PCSOs are supposed to act as the ‘eyes and ears’ of the force, but the fact that we are told that PCSOs have a direct line to the police to report problems only highlights the difficulties faced by ordinary residents in contacting the police and getting an effective response from them when they do.
Residents’ experience suggests that even as the ‘eyes and ears’ of the police force, PCSOs fall somewhat short of the mark.
This was demonstrated at a recent meeting called by the IWCA to address the antisocial behaviour emanating from a particular Blackbird Leys address. The meeting was well attended by affected residents. Also present were representatives of the landlords of both perpetrators and victims, Oxford City Council’s Crime and Nuisance Action Team (CANACT) and two police community support officers—who were apparently there to represent the neighbourhood beat team.
At the meeting a couple of worried residents reported that a gang of youths had just been seen out in the street waving around a handgun. Responding to this, the PCSOs suggested that such incidents should be reported to the police. I therefore asked if they were going to report it. To the astonishment of those present one of the officers replied, ‘I can’t do it. I’m either at this meeting or on patrol—not both. You do it if you want to.’
My argument—in line with that of the police force itself—that she was more likely to get a rapid response, fell on deaf ears. The officer certainly seemed to feel it wasn’t her problem.
As it was, we sent a couple of our activists out to survey the area but by this time the youths had gone. However, the officer’s reluctance to deal with this potentially lethal incident (as the community support officers themselves admitted) begs the question: what are the PCSOs actually for?
The same question arises when we consider another incident involving community support officers. A few weeks ago a young Blackbird Leys mother called the police about a gang of youths who had been terrorising her neighbours.
With four PCSOs as witnesses one of the youths walked casually across the road to threaten the mother, who was in conversation with the officers, telling her that he and his friends were going to burn her house down, with her family in it, for talking to the police.
The PCSOs’ response was to ignore the incident completely, despite the fact that one of their number was standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the recipient of the threat at the time it was made.
It would appear that the PCSOs themselves are unsure of their role in the community, perhaps because the police, the council and the government have remained altogether ambiguous about this, leaving the public to draw their own conclusions about the point of auxiliary police.
There is a danger that the PCSOs are more interested in gaining the friendship of errant youths than stopping them from running wild within our communities. Rather than helping us set out and reinforce boundaries for what is, and is not, acceptable behaviour, the evidence suggests the PCSOs seem to be unwilling, incapable or restricted from challenging these youths.
If community support officers, by taking this approach, end up reinforcing the antisocial minority’s perception that they can do almost anything they please without sanction then the PCSOs will in fact become part of the problem, not the solution.
A small but instructive example occurred recently in Greater Leys when a group of teenagers decided to have a bit of fun by running off with some PCSOs’ hats. The officers’ response was not to stand up to the youths, or caution them, but to meekly laugh it off and walk away.
It would appear, from this incident at least, that the very officers charged with protecting vulnerable, often frightened residents are as vulnerable and frightened themselves of the consequences of tackling antisocial gangs. If this really is the case then it is the fault of the various authorities for placing PCSOs on the front line with inadequate powers and backup.
The IWCA is not interested in making excuses for the police or any of the authorities when they are not pulling their weight. This is in stark contrast to New Labour career politicians such as Val Smith and Ed Turner, who have no interest in exposing their own government’s disastrous policies on policing.
But when the actions of the police, councils and housing associations run contrary to working class interests, the IWCA’s role—as a real voice for the people of this estate—is quite simple and straightforward: to put pressure on these authorities to provide the services they are paid for; nothing more, nothing less.
Tragic consequences of policing on the cheap
The gut-wrenching story of how a ten year-old Wigan lad, Jordan Lyon, drowned in a pool heroically saving the life of his younger sister while two PCSOs stood and watched, because—in the words of Detective Chief Inspector Phil Owen: ‘PCSOs are not trained to deal with major incidents such as this’—is the starkest example so far of the result of the government’s policy of providing policing on the cheap.
Commenting on this, Paul Kelly, chairman of the Police Federation in Manchester agreed that PCSOs didn’t have the same level of training as police officers. ‘The government are trying to fool the public,’ he said, ‘They take a person and dress him up as a police officer but they just don’t have the same powers.’
Police Federation officials claim Labour is deliberately replacing full-time officers with cheaper PCSOs to save money. Support officers cost the taxpayer at least £10,000 a year less.
But sources at Thames Valley Police admitted the force is under huge government pressure to reach targets on the recruitment of PCSOs and could lose funding if it fails to do so. Thames Valley PCSOs earn £17,000–20,000 depending on the hours they work. A full PC starts at £21,000 rising to £33,000. PCSOs have only a fraction of the training given to police—an initial course of just five weeks compared to 19 for the police.
Leys Independent, issue 37, October 2007
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