I never happened to be a fan of PCSO's. However, since with my current role, many of my staff are PCSO's. I have to say that whilst not all are good, some are very good. They will also make very very good coppers when they join - and they do. The role of a a PCSO is different from a copper and that's a good thing.
If it's resourced right, then the PCSO role is fine. In the met, we have Safer Neighbourhoods. 35,000 police officers and now several thousand PCSO's means that we have coppers to do the job (although it still seems not enough). In the met, the PCSO's have not taken a single copper's job. In fact the number of police officer's has gone up. Safer Neighbourhoods is paid for by the GLA (good old Ken) and is money over and above. That's why there are strict rules about deployment (Ken threatened to withdraw funding if we didn't stop using them for non-community policing stuff - and they monitor it!). The fact is that a lot of police forces abuse the role and send them to stuff that police officer's should go to - that creates resentment because they can't do the coppers job.
A find that a very high percentage of PC's have a misunderstanding of the PCSO role and believe they're useless. I am sure that many people on this thread can give examples of why that is the case - I can give examples too, but also examples of crap PC's (I think that's how this thread started!!!!??!!)
I have high expectations of my staff and they know it. Crap management = crap performance. Measure people on the wrong things and often many only do those things and nothing else - coz they are under huge pressures from daft KPI targets!
None of us are perfect and I've made my mistakes, the same as most other people. Bottom line is we all have to try and do a good job and never accept or put up with those who let us down. Here endeth defence of PCSO's..... incoming..... :-o
Quote:
| Originally Posted by Andy the Coastie Couldn't agree more.
These PCSO's are one of our area greatest waste of money, the silly wages they are paid should be put to better use and thier jobs scrapped OR replace them with PROPER COPPERS .
((( I won't say what I saw yesterday. YET ... But I will be at the same place and time today armed with digital camera and mobile phone ))) |