PM you will be aware more than most of us how the presence of DNA on otherwise startlingly innocuous items can bring stunning results, for example an office was broken into off a multi-storey car park and the cash box looted. SOCO was alerted by attending officers to a can of pepsi cola that the office manager insisted was never there before the break in. DNA put the suspect at the scene of the crime - and just imagine explaining your way out of that one, and the minute you have an arrest for the break in, you also have a s18 on the suspect's house, which many times brings the "evidence" a plenty, we still don't use SOCO enough, they can bring sensational evidence to a case
A question in return . . . .what will the next ten years bring?
PCSOs were supposed to number 24,000 the Labour Government told us ten years ago, this they soon amended to 16,000 within a year so 24,000 was never achieved and numbers of PCSOs have moved down from 16,000 ever since
the MET POLICE and several other Police Forces e.g. City of London have cut their PCSOs by half - most Forces have cut their PCSOs so what will PCSOs look like in 10 years from now? cor

what a question! PASS!
2004 national-PCSOs site interviews, the original interviews recorded ten years back
check out one of
the very first PCSO interview pages this site released TEN YEARS BACK in 2004: the page is split into 3 brief interviews with PCSOs who were forum members back then
1.
Digger was quite possibly the very first PCSO to be interviewed on the site : ENJOY!!
2.
The middle interview is with PCSO John Burnell although his real name is used on the interview page, we still have some of John's posts left although his account was accidentally wiped following some bad UCP stuff that he did back then, I think he wanted his account wiped TBH but never mind that is all a long time ago now and he is best remembered as an extremely good forum member and of course PCSO (he's probably a PC by now)
3.
Dilly Day Dream was one of the very first PCSOs to join the site ten years ago, she was a marvellous moderator on the site as well, her interview was placed both on the page and copied across to a 2004 thread which over the years was deleted by an automatic process (pruning) so that is why there are precious few links to her interview, after a moderator reshuffle she left the site but has always been greatly missed