'Numties in Yellow Jackets': The Nature of Hostility Towards the Police Community Support Officer in Neighbourhood Policing Teams

Abstract

Dr Bryn Caless is Director of Kent Police College and is responsible for the training of Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) for Kent Constabulary. In this article he considers the dichotomy between the hostility PCSOs have encountered from some within the police community and the positive findings on the role and effectiveness of the PCSO in published research. As part of the debate around the nature and efficacy of neighbourhood policing, we cannot pass over the central role played in such teams by Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs), a ‘designated’ role introduced by the Police Reform Act of 2002 following a successful pilot (is there ever any other kind?) in London. However, since their inception, PCSOs have been the target for unremitting criticism, ranging from their replacement of ‘real’ police officers, to their not being trained sufficiently properly to patrol neighbourhoods, to their having insufficient powers to compel compliance. This earned PCSOs the soubriquet of ‘numtie’ or ‘blockhead’, as jeeringly expressed by the Police Federation in 2004. It is ironically reminiscent of the hostility expressed at the ‘new police’ as ‘bluebottles’ or ‘Peelers’ when they first took to the streets of London in 1830.