PCSOs have a valuable role to play in policing

I write in reply to ‘We should value our police officers’ (Viewpoint, October 25).

I largely agree with the parent of the police officer who wrote in about the constant pressures and targets that police officers are pitted against in our modern policing times in this country, and the boundless paperwork mounds they are faced with.

However, as a police community support officer (PCSO) I can’t agree with the comments, to ‘do away with community support officers who walk the streets in pseudo-police uniforms with very few responsibilities’.

As a PCSO myself, I accept we do not possess the full powers of a police officer, for very good reason (and yes, at times this can be very frustrating); we are, however, responsible for many things and our powers are being increased all the time.

The Government decided to give us police-like uniforms for a reason, (rightly or wrongly). In my view what this person has to accept is that the police service is highly unlikely to change significantly in the near future as far as funding is concerned and accept that PCSOs are here to stay.

Because we don’t get the same volumes of admin tasks to do, (though that seems to be increasing all the time, as we are obliged to record our existence and measured on our targets too, though not to the same degree), we are generally able to be out and about providing high visibility policing.

Since the inception of PCSOs, generally both the public and police officers fully support us as we cover a lot of the more minor and heavily time-consuming tasks they used to have to deal with in order to allow them to focus on the more serious crime.

Yes, we would all like to see a lot more funding being allocated to the police service in general as with most other public bodies, but the reality is this is not going to happen (certainly in the near future), so let’s accept what we do have and make the most of it.

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