The new-style officers who could arrest crime figures

Burglars targeting local homes, and the fear and annoyance caused by anti-social behaviour, has frequently led to demands for a return to more traditional policing.

Although the area is not exactly a crime-plagued inner city suburb, residents rightly call for the policing they feel they deserve - while police say more and more of their sought-after resources are being used up in fighting serious crime.

A recently-introduced scheme to train and employ Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) could be the nearest we now get to having a return to the days of the 'bobby on the beat'. Provisions for these officers were laid down in the Police Reform Act 2002.

The first rank of the civilian officers marched out across West Yorkshire in March, and since then more people have joined up.

Now Weetwood Division - which polices Horsforth, Otley and Aireborough - is to get its first PCSOs, and the introduction of at least one officer within the Ilkley area may be in the not too distant future.

Some believe the community support officers could play a major role in increasing police presence in places such as Wharfedale in future.

Sergeant Esther Hobbs, of Ilkley Police last week asked Ilkley parish councillors if they would be interested in funding a PCSO who will spend much of his or her time dedicated to policing the town and the nearby villages.

West Yorkshire Police say the Weetwood and Pudsey Division PCSOs will go on the beat for the first time this week. These officers will be assigned to areas of the division as needed.

Sgt Hobbs believes a Keighley Division PCSO may eventually be assigned to the Ilkley area. But this may not be for some time, and she says an extra officer sponsored by the parish council could make local policing more effective.

She said: "It's fair to say it would be beneficial in dealing with anti-social behaviour and with the parking issues. We would gain visible policing in Ilkley and I'd love to see it happen here. They've got a lot of the same powers as regular officers. They're recruited through the police and get several weeks training.

"I think the idea is that they meet the public desire for visible policing. Because our officers are going from message to message, and they're very busy, the actual time for patrolling may not be when people are around who are going to see it. I think that's what people don't realise."

Shoppers and commuters in cities such as Leeds and Bradford may already be used to the sight of street wardens, who replace regular officers in general everyday peace-keeping duties in city centres.

The community support officer, however, has a different role, with other powers and responsibilities.

Unlike the street wardens, PCSOs wear a uniform very similar to that of a regular officer, and therefore increasing the police presence on the streets. West Yorkshire Police is among the few forces in the country which can give its PCSOs the power to detain suspects for up to half an hour - giving regular officers enough time to get to the scene.

The PCSOs can also hand out fixed penalty notices for parking infringements - a frequent source of discord in Ilkley and Otley.

However, PCSOs cost the police force much less than regular officers, who also take years to train.

Residents frequently ask where the Government money being put into our police forces is going. The answer, as Sgt Hobbs told Ilkley residents last week, is that the Government largely provides extra money for 'priority' crimes it has picked out to tackle.

"The priorities are racial hate crime, violent crime, robberies," said Sgt Hobbs.

And in leafy and relatively crime-free surroundings of Wharfedale, these crimes are not prevalent.

As senior police officers are always keen to point out, not only has the nature of the police force changed - so has the nature of crime.

Once upon a time, burglars were living in the same town or village as the victim, sometimes from a neighbouring community. Today, it is commonplace to find criminals travelling from deprived areas of Keighley, Bradford or Leeds to strike at the rich pickings offered by Wharfedale's more affluent homes. This means that a local bobby does not get the chance to recognise the 'known criminals' on his or her own patch, as so many of them commute to their crime scene.

And the scale of early 21st Century crime is something that reaches out far beyond the boundary of any one community, and sometimes even beyond the boundary of any one police force. Organised crime can hit a wide area. The knock-on effects caused by the drug dealers, such as the extreme poverty suffered by heroin addicts, is thought to be a major cause of crime.

Occasionally, there may be a huge drain on police resources outside the area, such as the Bradford riots of 2001, which had a knock-on effect on several West Yorkshire divisions for some time after the actual incident.

It is only natural that as towns and cities pull down the shutters and bring in tougher measures to deal with crime, criminals will look for easier targets elsewhere.

Part of the key to driving down crime in Wharfedale, believes Keighley Division, is crime prevention - such as residents being careful to lock their doors. It is estimated that sneak-in burglaries, or burglaries using hooks to retrieve keys from inside a house, via a cat-flap or letterbox, is responsible for anything up to a quarter of all burglaries.

The division launched its KeySafe campaign earlier this year in an attempt to raise public awareness of crimes such as this.

Introducing PCSOs in areas such as Wharfedale could not only provide extra officers to deal with less serious but nevertheless problematic crime, police believe, but could also free up experienced officers to tackle emergencies and serious crime elsewhere.