So you don't like the idea of a jobsworth (or well meaning but under-resourced and over-stretched local authority officer) appearing on your doorstep to assess your suitability to educate and parent your own children? But you'll get three weeks' notice!

Police Community Support Officers are far more important than that - they get to walk into your home unannounced and uninvited!

"Police community support officers have startled homeowners by wandering uninvited into their properties during a burglary crackdown. If doors were left open, the civilian officers  -  nicknamed 'Blunkett's Bobbies' after the Home Secretary who created them  -  walked straight into homes. On occasions, they came face-to-face with residents who were pottering around at home in the seaside resort of Hove in East Sussex. Critics claim the move is an abuse of power and could amount to trespass."

Truly bizarre. Wouldn't it be great to see officers cracking down on burglars during a "burglary crackdown"?  Is it beyond these PCSOs to tackle a real criminal? Or perhaps infinitely preferable to exercise their power over people who are going to be shocked, intimidated, and less likely to cause any actual trouble. Target box ticked and no PCSOs harmed in the making of this initiative.

"One resident, who came face to face with a PCSO in her home, said she was 'totally shocked' when she met the officer in her kitchen. The 38-year-old, who did not want to be named, said: 'I was just pottering around in the kitchen and then all of a sudden there was an officer in front of me. 'I really didn't know what to make of it and just stared at her for a while. 'She had clambered through my living room window and started lecturing me about crime prevention. I thought it was a bit much really, but it did make me think.'"

Did it make you think, what we have come to when a PCSO is given the OK to clamber through one of your windows to make a painfully laboured point about the possibility of your house being burgled by some kind of criminal Houdini? And then lecture you to boot? Or did it make you think that actually, it is somehow proportionate to keep all of your windows tightly shut, even during a heatwave, despite you actually being sat at your own kitchen table at the time, just in case?

"But police insist that officers have an obligation to investigate doors which have been left open in case an intruder is inside."

I am assuming, then, that East Sussex police hit 100% of their target response times to emergency and other calls - and solve 100% of all crimes, all of the time. Which is why they now have the luxury of fulfilling this spurious "obligation" to investigate the thousands of doors (and of course windows) that are currently open in Hove. Hmmm, this approach sounds a little familiar...

"Hove was hit by a wave of burglaries as people left windows and doors open during the recent heatwave. PCSO Sarah Thurley admitted that during the anti-burglary drive she and colleague Julie Wornham walked into people's homes when they found a door open. 'If we saw an open door we walked straight into the hallway,' she said. 'Some people appeared from various rooms, the bedroom, bathroom or kitchen and their initial reaction was to jump and say, "What are you doing in my hallway?" 'They looked a bit shocked to see us standing in their homes.' The PCSOs then issued the householders with security advice."

If PCSOs were actually effective, then simply allowing them to patrol residential streets during a heatwave would no doubt discourage burglars. Residents would be free to make their own decisions about how to keep cool in hot weather and the PCSOs would be ideally placed to offer security advice in a far less intrusive and offensive manner.

"PCSO Thurley admitted that she might have locked some people out of their homes by closing doors they had found open with nobody home. She said: 'We may well have been locking people out, but it's better safe than sorry and would teach them a lesson.'"

What business is it of PCSO Thurley's to decide, outside of the confines of the law, what is "better safe than sorry" and how to go about "teaching someone a lesson"? The professional suitability of someone who is happy to go on record and say such things should surely be brought into question.

"A Sussex Police spokesman said: 'As we have seen an increase in burglaries in Hove during the warmer weather, the two PCSOs were briefed to look at properties whilst they were on patrol as if looking through the eyes of a burglar, spotting open doors and windows which could provide easy access for an opportunistic thief. If they came across such an insecurity, they would in the first instance try to raise the occupant to point out the risks and offer crime prevention advice."

And in the second instance they would happily trespass, prefectly secure in their unalienable right to breach people's privacy and trample over their right to manage their homes and lives as they deem appropriate to their own individual circumstances - because it's better safe than sorry, and it will teach them a lesson.

"The spokesman added: 'The inference that these two officers are pretending to be burglars or are " raiding" homes is wholly inaccurate.'"

Ummm - can I just refer you back to your previous sentence: "the two PCSOs were briefed to look at properties whilst they were on patrol as if looking through the eyes of a burglar, spotting open doors and windows which could provide easy access for an opportunistic thief". Or is that a different thing to "pretending to be burglars"?

Well, I've already explained how these fine fellows operate in Stafford when it comes to parenting. So I hope that your house is clean and tidy, your children are appropriately attired and their noses wiped, and they are all sat round the kitchen table learning their irregular verbs at 10am...

H/T Ambush Predator