The Government is not giving up on community support officers despite an April defeat in House of Lords over the power for police-accredited CSOs – possibly including private security guards – to detain for up to 30 minutes.
The House of Lords voted 158-101 in favour of an amendment to take away the proposed power for community support officers to detain. In the April 25 debate in the House of Lords, proposed community support officers, accredited by police to patrol streets came in for criticism. For instance, the CSOs’ proposed power to detain a suspect for up to 30 minutes – with the purpose of awaiting a police officer to make an arrest – came in for flak. (On March 21, Home Office Minister John Denham, answering the question ‘what happens after 31 minutes” replied: ‘If the time limit runs out, the time limit runs out, so you would normally expect the person to be released.’ Later during that examination, Mr Denahm admitted that 30 minutes in a rural police area would be quite a short time for police to react to.) Lord Dholakia said in the April 25 debate in the Lords: ‘Only real policemen should have the power to detain. In any case, I do not believe that one could get a constable to attend a low-level crime within 30 minutes: ask anyone who has had his car radio stolen or his fence broken. The warden will hold the person for 30 minutes, looking at his watch every second. If the constable does not arrive in time, the warden will have to let that person go. That is plain daft.’ Speaking for the government, Lord Rooker replied that community support officer powers would depend on their training ‘and the choice of chief constables as to which powers they will seek to deploy’. As for training, earlier in the debate Lord Rooker said: ‘We are discussing with the police training providers and the Metropolitan Police what areas and competences will need to be covered in training for community support officers and accredited community safety officers. Those will include training on understanding the extent of their powers, as well as on communication, first aid, understanding diversity and conflict resolution.’ Among those voting on the losing, government side were Lord Condon, the former Metropolitan Police Commissioner. In an earlier debate on February 5 in the Lords, Lord Condon broadly welcomed the Police Reform Bill and said the community support officers should be given a fair chance, suggesting that the Met in particular would use CSOs enthusiastically.
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Met enthusiasm
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The first job for community support officers could be patrolling central London to provide reassurance against terrorist outrages, Home Office Minister John Denham suggested to a committee of MPs. He told them that many Metropolitan Police officers found high-profile foot patrols around important London sites ‘deeply frustrating after the novelty wore off because they are trained, professional police officers, they did not primarily join up for walking around Westminster and Canary Wharf reassuring the public’. Such patrolling would be better suited to CSOs, freeing the police for other duties, he suggested. Joint patrols with police are also feasible, the minister added. Mr Denham, who spent part of the early months of 2002 touring England and Wales to sell the Police Reform Bill to police forces, has admitted that the government will not force chief constables (who will be responsible for community support officers training and work in the field) to develop CSOs. He told on March 21 ‘it is for the chief [police] officer to decide whether he or she wishes to have community support officers as part of their force’. He added: ‘I know it is the view of the Metropolitan Police, who have particularly been keen on community support officers, that there is a role for a new type of police employee carrying out a range of patrolling duties, and provided uniform and things of that sort are sorted out sensibly there should be no difficulty in the public identifying who is doing what.’ Mr Denham paid tribute to community warden schemes already in being: ‘I have been very struck by the success of neighbourhood wardens employed by local authorities … people who are there who spend the vast majority of their working day out in the community with the ability to stop to people, to talk to people, to get to know people but also to gather information about what is going on.?
