The Thin End Of The Wedge?

Take a look at the picture on the left. If you can't see it clearly, click it and it will enlarge. Who are the the two officers in uniform? In a rush or in an urgent need you may well think you are looking at or talking to police officers but you will be wrong!

They are in fact Community Support Officers, in this case belonging to Devon and Cornwall Constabulary. Their uniform is extremely constable like and their hats adorn a chequer band all be it blue and white as apposed to black and white.

Unison, which represents the majority of police staff across England and Wales have petitioned the Home Office to issue CSOs with a standard kit to ease public confusion and their plans are to be similar to Devon and Cornwall's Sussex and Cambridgeshire's CSO's.

The union said it wants to routinely issue CSO's with stab vests (no arguments from me there) and have said that "to do the job properly CSO's need the right kit, a uniform that is distinctive, practical, smart and carries the authority of office."

Now, excuse me? "distinctive"! How can looking almost identical to fully trained, fully sworn constables be distinctive?

The Federation and ACPO have urged caution with the new standardised uniform because they look too similar to police officers.

In my opinion it will cause greater confusion rather than lessen it if their uniforms were standardised like the above plans! Unison said the new uniform could lessen the furore around such incidents when the CSOs from Greater Manchester Police did not jump into a pond in Wigan where 10 year old Jordan Lyon drowned in May.

How will it lessen the furore? As I asked in the first part, what if there is an urgent situation and you need a police officer and instead you get an under trained CSO who walks into view. The member of public will see a police uniform and expect that person to be fully equipped and more importantly, fully trained. When the CSO claims they can't deal with the situation because of various reasons this will most likely infuriate the member of public causing possible danger to the CSO or worse still, like the Wigan incident, result in death!

The public see a uniform and react, they know what a police uniform is, they've been brought up around it. When someone is popped into an extremely similar uniform and placed onto the street there will be trouble to follow.

If, the CSOs at the Wigan incident were in a very different uniform to a police officer then people would have probably understood a bit more, instead, they saw someone wearing a police uniform doing nothing! Even the newspapers called them "cops"

A definite difference needs to be made and an explanation to the public about the powers a CSO has.

If Unison wants similar uniforms, better training and betting equipping CSO's then what next?

Will they start to encroach on the jobs sworn officers do?

.....OOPS!!!! TOO LATE!!!

If you make CSOs look like Police Constables, train them up better and better equip them, surely that makes them Police Constables?

.......at half the price!