A Police Community Support Officer is defined as a role within the police community which helps police officers keep peace and enforce the law in their local area. PCSO’s also provide information and advice to the community on crime prevention. Though, the role is often criticised due to the fact PCSO’s don’t have the same powers as police officers. Rather, the role of a PCSO is more non-confrontational, focused on providing the public with reassurance, and deals with minor offences. Now, one police force in Essex is looking at slashing all PCSO officers in their force, due to budget and funding issues. This decision is thought to be revised following the Home Office’s announcement that an extra £100m in funding will be provided to neighbourhood policing in England and Wales. This funding comes as part of its pledge to put more officers on the ground by 2029. But what do you think? Do you think police community support officers make a real difference in preventing crime and improving community safety? Or rather, should we just have regular police officers with full powers?
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NewsTranscript
00:00Well, just to sort of put things in sort of context, we're talking about 55,000 sort of
00:07shoplifting offences a day. Now, obviously, that's an average, but that's a phenomenal
00:11number on the high street, and also sort of the rise in sort of abuse incidents where
00:15sort of staff, whether they be sort of behind the counter or the security guards, are assaulted
00:20in sort of carrying out sort of the, you know, serving people. Now, the difficulty is that
00:24sort of what's the causes? Well, there's a whole range of issues. You know, of course,
00:28people are sort of getting poorer, but I don't think it stands that entirely. So some people
00:33maybe don't have desperation, but of course, what we're also seeing is the rise of sort of
00:37gangs doing this. Shoplifting incidents in 2024 reportedly cost retailers £2.2bn. This figure
00:44is up £1.8bn on the previous year. In fact, an industry body has said that retail crime is out
00:50of control in the UK, with shoplifters carrying out violent acts of theft due to not favouring
00:55consequences. I think there is a sense that sort of shoplifting now, it's kind of, well,
01:01firstly, maybe victimless, but it's not, because of course, it's the shopkeepers or the sort of
01:05the company that owns it. But more particularly, of course, it's the sort of the fact that police
01:09seem to have less power in terms of both arresting these people and putting them in jail because,
01:13of course, they clearly believe that's not going to happen. The most important thing we've got to
01:19recognise, we're standing in a high street here, but of course, it's not the main street,
01:22and we sort of go down every high street and you see sort of premises being vacated,
01:26and sort of hearings of the double A Smiths are going to disappear from the high street,
01:30and many other names have sort of gone previously. And it's really difficult to be a high street
01:35trader with all the tenant costs in terms of the pound rates and whatever else that they've got to
01:40pay and stuff. And so their marginal sort of the amount that they make in terms of profit is pretty
01:47limited. Therefore, anything that sort of undermines that is going to sort of put them
01:51into a loss-making situation. So it's a crisis, and we need to do something about it.