No desire to equip police community support officers with handcuffs

The subject was raised with Chief Inspector Jon Carter, District Commander for Arun and Chichester, at a meeting of the district council’s overview select committee.

A question from Billy Blanchard-Cooper (Lib Dem, Brookfield) – who was not at Tuesday’s meeting – pointed out that some security guards were issued with handcuffs and wondered why PCSOs were not.

Mr Blanchard-Cooper asked if it was ‘appropriate’ or ‘a good use of officer time’ for PCSOs to have to wait around for some one with the required powers before a suspect could be arrested.

CI Carter, who is the force’s lead officer for PCSOs, told the meeting that, across the whole of the UK, only British Transport Police had given their community support officers handcuffs.

He said: “The other forces have considered it and decided not to issue PCSOs with handcuffs or other restraints because there is a real fear around the blurring of the role between the PCSO and the police officer.”

CI Carter said it was rare for security guards to be issued with cuffs and that doing so brought a ‘container load of issues’ – not least of which being whether an arrest was lawful.

Like any other member of the public, PCSOs can make what is often known as a citizen’s arrest – as covered under Section 3 of the Criminal Law Act 1967 – but this is in no way the same as the powers given to police officers.

CI Carter said to train them all to the required level would take a massive amount of time – and a police survey had shown that most didn’t want to carry cuffs anyway.

He added: “I’ll never say never but certainly it’s not on my agenda to ask the chief officer to give PCSOs handcuffs.

“PCSOs themselves generally don’t want it and I’m not getting the sense that any Chief Constable has the desire to do this.”

A message from the Editor, Gary Shipton:

In order for us to continue to provide high quality and trusted local news, I am asking you to please purchase a copy of our newspapers.

With the coronavirus lockdown having a major impact on many of our local valued advertisers - and consequently the advertising that we receive - we are more reliant than ever on you helping us to provide you with news and information by buying a copy of our newspapers.

Our journalists are highly trained and our content is independently regulated by IPSO to some of the most rigorous standards in the world. But being your eyes and ears comes at a price. So we need your support more than ever to buy our newspapers during this crisis.

Stay safe, and best wishes.