PCSOs are Human too
There has been a lot of discussion in the police blogs recently on the role of PCSOs. I guess this is due to a recent TV series on PCSOs Beat: Life on the Street. I haven’t seen the programme so I can’t comment on its content but I want to make a few points about PCSOs in general, particularly in light of some of the appalling comments made by some police officers in the blogs.
DisgruntledCop slags them off as a complete & utter waste of money, calling them “Dayglo lumps”, but confesses to not knowing what they do. At the time of writing there were 32 comments (hint, hint, see my earlier posts on commenting here), many of which serve merely to slag off PCSOs. One anonymous cop says “don’t get me wrong. I have several friends who are PCSOs, and they do a great job. After all, I didn’t spend 31 weeks at training school up north and then a further 18 months learning to the best police officer I can be just so I can deal with civil disputes and other non crime related dross that the call handlers send us to.” And, “Get used to the notion that some police officers will never trust you or want you at their station. The idea was not welcomed by the majority of proper front line police officers. Get used to the idea that you are not good enough to get into the police force as a proper police officer, even if you have never tried to get into the police force.”
Another says, “I don’t know many PCSOs who want to stay a PCSO, they are all wannabe PCs.
Another complains about name-calling, slags off someone for their spelling & grammatical errors and proceeds to make 11 grammatical & spelling errors in 5 short paragraphs.
PC Plod, talking to a PCSO says, “have you given any thought as to your prospects of advancement, or are you happy with being a PCSO for the rest of your working life?”, er, that’ll be like me and the thousands of other PCs who have wanted to remain as PCs for 30 years then will it, I’d say that was highly commendable, perhaps PC Plod was saying the same, but I doubt it.
What these comments, and the hundreds of others in the police forums, actually do is spread false propaganda about the role of PCSOs and many of them are factually incorrect. I may be in somewhat of a minority, but I wish to attempt to adjust the balance.
One of the blogs complains about the wages of a PCSO, saying that they get more than starting PCs. PCSOs get paid between £13,000 per year and £24,000 depending on which force they work for. Hertfordshire pays the most & Lincolnshire pays the least as salaries were set by individual forces. The higher-paying forces, in hindsight, have realised that they are paying too much and have frozen the salaries so current PCSOs on the top whack will get no pay rise for several years until the salary falls into line with the amended value of the role (which will be somewhat less than current top pay)
PCs start on about £20,000 rising to £22,700 after training. (Met officers get about 6 grand more). There is only one force which starts their PCSOs on a salary greater than a newbie PC; Herts. There are only 3 forces whose maximum PCSO salary is greater than a newbie PC; Kent, Suffolk & the Met (who also have extra allowances for their PCSOs). So the assertion that PCSOs get paid more than new PCs, whilst it is correct in a small minority of cases, is actually very misleading. Also, PCs have a salary structure which increases every year up to £32,000. PCSOs don’t have such a structure, indeed, some forces will not be giving their PCSOs a rise for years.
Many people say things like, ‘for every 3 PCSOs we could have 2 PCs’. They base this on the fact that a PC costs a few grand a year more than a PCSO. This is also misleading and does not take into account that many of their PCs are paid in excess of £35,000 year, they have an excellent pension which can be paid at 2/3 their salary for longer than they were actually a PC, and it costs many many more times to train a PC and maintain career training than it does for a PCSO.
Many police officers fail to understand the role of the PCSO. Criticisms about not being sworn officers, unable to investigate crimes, where are they all on a Friday & Saturday night when it’s all kicking off, if they find a crime they have to call the police, etc etc etc.
PC Southwest said on one of the blogs that they have, “no crimes to carry & investigate, no heavy workload, if there is a crime they can call a PC, no serious confrontation, no night shifts or working past midnight, not accountable for the amount of force used, no having to respond to code one calls, no stress.”
Well no shit Sherlock. That’s like slagging off a nurse because they don’t have to go out in an ambulance on a Saturday night; they are different jobs!
The role of a PCSO includes:
- Providing a visible & reassuring presence in the community
- Attending disorder, nuisance & anti-social behaviour
- Dealing with community issues
- Gathering evidence through observation
- Helping with missing person enquiries
- Assisting with house to house enquiries
- Crowd control
- Directing traffic at accidents and roadblocks
Exactly the kind of stuff which many of the cops who slag them off moan like fuck when they get tasked to do it. Our PCSOs do a whole lot more. They often offer up to do jobs which they’re not really supposed to do but we let them anyway, they back up officers, take crime reports, assist with prisoners, all sorts.
There was a joke in one of the daily papers last week which showed a big bastard burglar coming out of a doorway carrying a crowbar & a PCSO who says “Can you wait until I get a proper copper”. It gives a completely false impression of the role of a PCSO. Something like a PC opening the same door, water pours out onto the street & the copper gets slagged off for saying “Can you wait until I get a proper plumber”. Maybe the joke should have showed nobody at the door & the burglar walking off into the sunset with his bag of goodies because that is the alternative to not having the PCSO there. At least they can call an officer.
I’m a tax-payer as well as a police officer and I pay rather a lot. Do you think I’d get more value for money paying someone 35 grand a year to stand outside my kids’ school asking people not to park on the zig-zags when someone will do it for 15 or 17 grand? There are many other roles which exactly the same applies. PCSOs free up police resources to attend to many more ‘serious’ matters (and we can’t even do that properly).
If PCSOs aren’t carrying out the roles they are recruited for, that is the fault of those who manage them. In my experience they have been a valuable addition to the ‘policing community’ and provide resources for stuff which would otherwise be left ignored.
Yes, we might be able to do a bit more with more officers, we could have one on every street if we had enough, but it ain’t gonna happen.
We have, what is it, 141,000 police officers. Numbers increase year on year and mostly have done and will continue to do so. As police (mis)management takes officers away from their core responsibilities a huge gap is being left in the market and PCSOs are filling this gap.
Maybe if managers sorted out internal problems with their ‘human resource management’ and got back to proper policing, we could have more officers tasked to ‘proper policing’ instead of being in ‘not my remit’ roles. Then we could have the best of both worlds.
If you’re gonna slag off PCSOs, and there are things which aren’t right about the system, you might at least attempt to find out what they are supposed to do.
Paul says:
Well, yes and no.
The concern I have about PSCOs is not the concept. It’s the implementation.
This comes from other areas of the public sector. Teaching and Health. In both of these the ‘dumbed down cheap equivalent’ is increasingly being used *in place of* the “proper copper” ; examples include “High Level Teaching Assistants” and “Nurse Practitioners”. These are, respectively, TAs with a bit more cash looking after whole classes, and Nurses who’ve done a short course making diagnoses.
If the Police were managed properly (usual Parkinson problem) then there wouldn’t be the need for this junk.
Aside on Police Bureaucracy: my other half recently was a witness to some dangerous driving viz. a bloke driving across a roundabout (literally) and hitting the vehicle she was in. A Police Officer interviewed her there and took extensive notes. Now she’s been sent ….. a big form which has exactly the same questions which could she ‘please fill in’ ….
November 3rd, 2006 at 8:18 am
Dr Dan H. says:
I suppose that what really annoys people about PCSOs is that they were portrayed to the public as a cheap way of bolstering police numbers, but have turned out of be pretty much useless. Government surveys of crime before and after the introduction of PCSOs to an area have shown consistently that there is no significant difference.
The powers a PCSO has are minimal. This makes them next to useless for routine policing; they simply aren’t a threat to criminals save as observers, and most criminals are already well known to police. Most yobs know a PCSO is a paper tiger, and treat them as such; PCSO-baiting is a common sport on large estates, simply because it is so risk-free and so amusing (and let’s face it, who can blame youths for indulging in a little baiting of muppets like these?).
So, why bother with PCSOs? Herts Police have clearly not been thinking, since their lot are paid almost as much as coppers, so no money is saved by using PCSOs. As per usual with this government, there is no deep, sinister motivation behind the policy. Deep sinister motives require brains the Government collectively hasn’t got; they merely have shallow petty-mindedness and low-grade stupidity and very little foresight.
No, this is just another governmental fuckup, caused by a vaguely promising idea not being planned out properly (and discarded as useless) before implementation. They do this a lot; speed cameras got rolled out on the completely untested hypothesis that speed caused road accidents (it does, but very few), CCTV got rolled out as a good idea that wasn’t tested, and ID cards are getting the same treatment.
They just don’t think ahead, or think at all, and then they lie like hell to cover up the products of this low-grade moronic sort of evil. Britain is not turning into a police state; it is turning into a moron state.
November 3rd, 2006 at 12:29 pm
bj says:
the point about “nurse consultants” replacing proper medical consultants (and incidentally medical consultants needing significantly less training and experience to be appointed than they did but a few years ago
“techining classroom assistants” now regularly running classes without a quailified techers
and PCSO’s all have their parallels
they are all from the same labour party whiteboard session which came up with these ideas at the same time, and incidentally did the high level of the multi billion pound waste of resources on IT for the NHS nonsense ideas at the same time
these unelected, hardly debated during elections, silly ideas came from the blairs and mandelsons of this world
and they are all failing for pretty much the same reasons
which is not to say many a good senior nurse, teaching assistant, and PCSO are not worth their weight in gold
rather it is the way they are used and organised, and the systemic failure to manage the public sector properly which is the problem
November 3rd, 2006 at 2:24 pm
ted says:
The point about police officers dealing with parking and other minor issues is that they only spend a percentage of their time doing these jobs. Then when they are not doing these jobs they are available for other police work.
I can’t put hard fact and figures on it but my perception is that where I live and work general disorder and petty crime (vandalism, car crime etc which is not the least bit petty to the victims) is increasing hugely in some areas. I believe the yobs have now realised that for most incidents at weekends we are so overstretched that it will be hours in many cases before the police arrive. If we arrive at all. The chance of patrol officers finding and stopping disorder at an early stage is small.
I believe therefore that any cash available should be spent getting cops on the street. Either by employing more cops or what might make more sense financially in the long run having an overtime budget to be used to get extra cops on the street when and where it counts.
There may be a place for PCSOs but I think they are a luxury we can’t afford right now.
November 6th, 2006 at 7:49 pm
PCSO says:
Great post!
It’s good to see there are some Officers who don’t completely hate us.
November 7th, 2006 at 9:11 pm
Brit1234 says:
I don’t see why we should have them in such large numbers, their effect on crime is small. As said above all the criminals know they have no power and it is painfull to see kids abusing them off duty.
We had a system a few years back where we had a couple on team to assist us. That worked really well. They were working with us on a 24 hour shift patrolling about.When we needed them for boarding up, asisting with large groups and other duties they were there. We had a lot of time for those PCSOs. However they were taken from team and vast numbers were recruited, Now they have no focus and hardly ever assit us, it upsets us when we are bing run ragged and there are large groups of PCSO chatting in groups on the street.
They have there uses but I think the whole idea and numbers should be rethought in aim at reducing crime and making policing more efficient.
November 25th, 2006 at 6:08 pm
john says:
As a member of the public, I feel duped by the goverment by giving us pretent police. PCSOs to me or failed police applicants, half trained,unprofessional cop wanabees,a waste of my money (taxpayer),
nosey busy bodys, what happens if a kids lost” go & find a Police Community Support Officer” The public should have being giving a vote about PCSOs first, I’ sure no one would have wanted them, if its the Uniform there loads of lollypop man/lady vacancys. Can you remember cardboard cut out police cars in the 1990s?? thats the modern day equiverlant, a PCSO
November 29th, 2006 at 3:38 pm
Samuel Smith says:
I am a 20 year old male considering a career as a PCSO, but am put off by the abuse they receive from youths.
I want to become a Police Officer and have done since i was at school.
What John has posted is disgusting, in every job there are diffrent roles, i think we are wasting more money on immigration and the giving out of freebies like houses for example to immagrants. So they feel at home, any help for 1st time buyers from the goverment, i don’t think so.
PCSO’s are a presence on the streets but are undermined with the LACK OF power that they have, with public knowing this does make their job alot harder.
I believe more power should be given to PCSO’s along with equipment to protect themselves.
September 27th, 2007 at 5:59 pm
Missy says:
I can personally vouch for the fact that PCSOs are a waste of space and tax payers money.
http://mpress.missweblash.com/article.asp?id=140
Following this incident, I have received an apology from the Police, who have gone as far as to admit that PCSOs are pretty pointless when it comes to dealing with real crime.
Do yourself and the public a favour - join the *real* Police force.
November 3rd, 2007 at 12:11 pm
200 says:
Missy,
not afraid of sweeping generalisations at all are you, you had a bad experience from one (poss 2) PCSOs and so the whole concept is a ‘waste of space & tax payers money’
Get with the programme, PCSOs aren’t there to deal “with real crime”, that’s the job of the police.
As annoying as it is, you don’t actually have the right to park in front of your own house, anyone can park there, so if your neighbours have 3 cars and they get there first, it might be annoying but it certainly isn’t illegal.
I also see you slag them off for ‘not putting a child’s life before their own’ - have you actually looked into that story or just read the headline press, if you had, you’d know the circumstances were quite different from the headlines which initially appeared.
Oh, and just to balance your viewpoint, you obviously didn’t hear about the 2 PCSOs in Watford a couple of weeks ago who jumped into a river to rescue a suicidal female and dragged her to the bank, using the same ‘balanced view’ as you this must mean that PCSOs are actually very brave, and extremely good value for money - just ask the suicidal female’s parents!
November 3rd, 2007 at 12:49 pm
Missy says:
What those people were doing WAS illegal in every sense of the word.
They were DELIBERATELY parking ON my driveway - my own property, not a public road.
They harassed my family (including my 10 yr old son) on a daily basis - including threats of violence. The female tried to break down our front door on one ocassion. She was eventually dealt with because I went to my local police station and demanded that the issue was dealt with by a real Police Officer, not an overgrown prefect who was just as afraid of my neighbours as I was.
Referring back to the roles of the PCSO that you cite in your article,
Neither of the PSCOs in question did nothing to reassure me, my family our other neighbours who were suffering at the hands of a family of thugs.
Did nothing to deal with the ‘community issue’ of how an entire street was being intimidated by these people.
Did nothing to ‘gather evidence through observation’ They asked a handful of inane questions and left.
To be quite honest I don’t give a s*** about the girl in Watford - what I do care about is the safety of my own family - which our local PSCO’s are to inept or unwilling to do anything about. I’ve paid my taxes for nearly 30 years now - I expect some return on that investment.
November 3rd, 2007 at 5:09 pm
200 says:
“To be quite honest I don’t give a s*** about the girl in Watford”
Well that about sums you up then, not surprising then that people don’t give a shit about your problems really, is it?
November 3rd, 2007 at 5:38 pm
Missy says:
Tell me… why did you joing the Police? To abuse the public, was it?
November 11th, 2007 at 4:32 pm
200 says:
why , have you been abused? You really have no interest or care about why I joined the police, it certainly wasn’t to blow smoke of the arses of people like you.
Why did you come to this blog, to abuse PCSO?s, oh, no need to answer that one as clearly that is the case.
November 11th, 2007 at 11:28 pm
Butch says:
I work with police officers and PCSOs every day. PCSOs are NOT Police Officers, they are Community Support. A few of the PCSOs I deal with are certainly nothing but a waste of time, and whinge about everything. Many others want to do a good job foe their community. It takes all sorts after all - give the good ones a change and sack the lazy whinging ones.
November 21st, 2007 at 11:41 pm
200 says:
Butch,
yep, good & bad in every role. But your comment that PCSOs are NOT police officers is like saying “nurses aren’t firemen” i.e stating the bleeding obvious, it’s a pity more people who slag them off for exactly the same don’t realise that too.
November 22nd, 2007 at 8:36 am
Butch says:
True, people think they are there to provide a 2 tier police service. Unfortunately I think a lot of the PCSOs think they are police officers. I think that I may have stated the obvious, but it isn’t generally known!
November 23rd, 2007 at 10:18 pm
Missy says:
200, a marginally valid point…. but why the hell does the Police Service send out PSCO’s when a member of the public has been the victim of umpteen crimes and obviously at risk of harm?
The two PCSO’s that were were sent to my home - at a time when my 10-yr old son was at grave risk by maniacal neighbours - couldn’t even park their bicycles let alone provide any support*
Since my last post, the neighbour from hell has been imprisoned for 2 years. His partner was given a suspended sentence and their children taken into care. We have also received a formal apology from the Police Service for the inappropriate handling of our case.
Sometimes, just sometimes, the public are right.
*this is not a joke - one of them leant their bike against another neighbours’ car and damaged it!!!
December 8th, 2007 at 6:34 pm
Howard Wilson says:
Missy, For your future information, as you have a rental house next door, Landlords have a “duty of care” to the neighbours of their tenants, a good Solicitor will always rectify any problems with nuisance tenants.
PCSO’s are giving ‘presence’ on the streets, the lack of which has driven a gulf between the Police and the Community.
December 26th, 2007 at 3:15 am
Moody blues PCSO says:
I am a serving PCSO and I would like to thank 200 for your comments. The public and police officers in general do not realise what a difficult and demoralising job being a PCSO can be. Constant abuse from police officers, the federation and the public. “All the world will be your enemy, prince with a thousand enemies” that should be the pcso motto.
Those police officers and members of the public who slag off pcsos really don’t have a clue what we do. Yes there are some lazy cowards out there but that is the same as in any profession. People don’t seem to see the good we do. The people’s lives who have been blighted by anti-social behaviour- ‘the police don’t care’ that is what these people tell me. ‘I haven’t seen a police officer in fourteen years’ that’s another one, or how about ‘I feel a lot safer going out now knowing that you pcsos are patrolling the streets day and day out’ that is what one disabled lady told me.
I suffered a nasty assualt on duty whilst saving a member of the public from a good beating(i am only a small female) with no safety equipment, but the press don’t seem to ever hear the good things that Pcsos do. Pcsos have made a differnce to the quality of life of a lot of people living in rough dangerous areas. We walk these deprived streets everyday and all we get is abuse. Police officers constantly complain but at least they are respected, something we will never be. We are not human we are made of cardboard and plastic. Eventually the federation will have its way and we will be gone. I expect comments will follow to the affect of how melodramatic but it’s the truth.
December 26th, 2007 at 3:15 pm
Taxpayer says:
PCSO’s are USELESS, a complete waste of time and money, only a blind man could come up with such a ridiculous idea, I live in quite a nice area and we do have these plastic plods mainly as decoration but on the sink estates, feral youths ridicule these losers, openly swigging white cider and baiting these muppets in ill fitting uniforms from primark and dopey looking plastic cap badges, these fake coppers are nothing but school bullying victims and social misfits desperate to wear a uniform and feel important, they are treated as either a bad joke or with utter contempt by the general public and the REAL Police alike, scrap the lot of them and spend the money wasted on proper policing.
October 10th, 2008 at 10:37 pm
Disgruntled PCSO says:
I am a PCSO. I have been bitten, bottled, punched, shoved and spat at. I have been abused by members of the public and ignored by police officers. I have saved police officers from being punched and attacked and I have been dragged into the office and disciplined for doing my job and protecting members of the public from aggressive layabouts.
We ARE a waste of space but I got into the job with the aim of becoming a regular. After witnessing how the public treat the police/PCSOs and, maybe more, how the police themselves treat PCSOs I don’t really fancy it anymore.
October 27th, 2008 at 1:33 am
Disgruntled Member of the public says:
Let’s just get rid of these fake coppers and get real police back on the streets.
November 9th, 2008 at 9:44 pm