Flamingoes, police, and the illusion of safety

What does a community support officer have in common with a plastic flamingo? More than you might think.

If last year’s tragic events in Wigan have anything to tell us, it is about the danger of relying upon the illusion of safety. To refresh your memory, last year saw the wholly unnecessary death of Jordon Lyon, who drowned trying to save his sister while two community support officers stood by. They were waiting for police officers to turn up, as they were “not trained to deal with major incidents such as this”.

For non-British readers, Community Support Officers (PCSOs) are a volunteer police force, given some training, very few powers, and uniforms that closely resemble those of real police officers. Their purpose is two-fold: to make up a shortfall in the number of law enforcement needed in the UK, and to act as a visible police presence on the streets of Britain.

Although by some counts crime has been steadily falling in the UK, fear of crime continues to rise. The jittery public need reassurance that they are safe, while the police need to make best use of limited resources. While seeing police officers on the street might make us feel safer, their crime-fighting skills are much better spent working on cases.

So what does this have to do with flamingoes? These birds are social creatures, and can form flocks comprising of millions of birds. One assumes this is because, as with many social creatures, being in a large group decreases the chance that you’ll be eaten by a predator. The story goes that zookeepers have much difficulty getting these birds to breed, as in the small captive groups they feel too exposed. To get around this problem, one enterprising zookeeper painted flamingoes on the enclosure walls. It didn’t work. Undeterred, he then filled the enclosure with plastic model birds, which were similarly unsuccessful. Then, in a stroke of genius, he thought to plaster the inside of the aviary with mirrors. The mirrors reflected the mirrors which reflected them back, and reflected the flamingoes too, transforming a modest collection of birds into a teeming flock of millions. The flamingoes, fooled into security, began to breed.

Although we’d like to think of ourselves as beyond such cheap tricks, the reality is that we are not. PCSOs are simply the evolution of long-running charade. We make irrational demands of the police force, so can we really be surprised when Britain’s much-vaunted visible police presence turns out to be little more than smoke and mirrors?

3 comments January 21st, 2008