Deaths of PCSOs On Duty
Since their introduction in 2002 three PCSOs have died on duty, although no PCSOs have been unlawfully killed in the execution of their duty:
- 31 January 2006: PCSO Adrian Martin, aged 45 – Metropolitan Police: Collapsed and died of heart failure while on a police cycle training course at Hendon. He was the 1st PCSO to die on duty.
- 10 September 2007: PCSO Chris Maclure, aged 21 – Greater Manchester Police (GMP): Died whilst on cycle patrol in Hindley Green Wigan when he was accidentally struck by a lorry. As a result of his death safety was improved nationally for officers deployed on cycles. An award for GMP PCSOs the ‘PCSO Christopher McClure Memorial Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Community’ was made in his honour.
- 28 April 2009: PCSO David Leslie Adams, aged 59 - Avon and Somerset Constabulary: Died of a suspected heart attack whilst attending a road traffic collision whilst on duty in Woolverton near Frome. PCSO Adams had previously been a Traffic Warden with his Force before becoming one of the constabularies first PCSO’s. During his service he won an award in 2007 for outstanding customer service in the Somerset East District at the Avon and Somerset Community Police Awards.
The Police Roll of Honour Trust includes PCSOs in its roll of fallen officers alongside constables providing they die in operational circumstances (i.e. in the performance of a law enforcement role, including patrol)
Read more about this topic: Police Community Support Officer
Famous quotes containing the words deaths of, deaths and/or duty:
“There is the guilt all soldiers feel for having broken the taboo against killing, a guilt as old as war itself. Add to this the soldier’s sense of shame for having fought in actions that resulted, indirectly or directly, in the deaths of civilians. Then pile on top of that an attitude of social opprobrium, an attitude that made the fighting man feel personally morally responsible for the war, and you get your proverbial walking time bomb.”
—Philip Caputo (b. 1941)
“As deaths have accumulated I have begun to think of life and death as a set of balance scales. When one is young, the scale is heavily tipped toward the living. With the first death, the first consciousness of death, the counter scale begins to fall. Death by death, the scales shift weight until what was unthinkable becomes merely a matter of gravity and the fall into death becomes an easy step.”
—Alison Hawthorne Deming (b. 1946)
“No man who acts from a sense of duty ever puts the lesser duty above the greater. No man has the desire and the ability to work on high things, but he has also the ability to build himself a high staging.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)