As police chiefs publicly defended the actions of two community support officers who stood by while a ten-year-old boy drowned, calls grew from inside the force for the posts to be scrapped.

Greater Manchester Police said yesterday that the officers’ decision not to jump into the pond because they lacked training in “water rescue” was proper.

The family of Jordon Lyon demanded to know why the two failed to help the child’s stepfather, a friend and a uniformed sergeant, who all dived in to try to save the boy. Anthony Ganderton, Jordon’s stepfather, interrupted a police witness at the inquest to say: “You don’t have to be trained to jump in after a drowning child.”

On May 3 Jordon, his two brothers, his stepbrother and his stepsister, Bethany, had gone looking for tadpoles around John Pit Pond in Wigan. The old mining shaft is narrow at the edge but quickly becomes 6ft 6in (2m) deep.

Bethany began to struggle in the water and Jordon saved her life by holding her up. John Collinson, a fisherman who went to help, described how he found her with her arms wrapped around Jordon’s neck. The boy’s head was under the water but his eyes were open.

Mr Collinson and a companion waded into the water. Bethany was pulled to safety but Jordon disappeared beneath the surface. The police were called. Two community support officers arrived on bicycles but, Mr Collinson said, they just stood there.

Jordon’s stepbrother ran home to raise the alarm and Mr Ganderton rushed to the pond. “When we got there the PCSOs [police community support officers] were just stood there watching,” he said. “I can’t understand it. If I had been walking along a canal and seen a child drowning, I would have jumped in.”

Mr Ganderton and his friend dived in and were quickly joined by a sergeant who stripped off his body armour after being alerted by radio.

Jordon was pulled out unconscious, having spent between 10 and 30 minutes under water, and died in hospital. His kidneys and liver were donated. The deputy coroner, Alan Walsh, told a Bolton inquest that the boy had shown “the utmost bravery”. He recorded a verdict of accidental death.

The police said yesterday: “Unfortunately, the pond is locally known by more than one name and, as a result, officers called to attend the incident were sent to a different location.Two PCSOs on patrol in the area arrived at John Taylor’s Pit but there were no signs of the boy in the water. Having made an assessment of the situation, one of the PCSOs called the control room to give out the correct location.

“PCSOs are not trained to deal with major incidents such as this. Both ourselves and the fire brigade regularly warn the public of the dangers of going into unknown stretches of water so it would have been inappropriate for PCSOs, who are not trained in water rescue, to enter the pond.”

Greater Manchester’s Assistant Chief Constable, Dave Thompson, said that he fully supported the actions of the PCSOs, and added: “The lake is about the size of a football pitch, at a former quarry. The water is black with poor visibility. While shallow at the edge, after a few feet it becomes very deep, very quickly.”

Paul Kelly, chairman of the Greater Manchester Police Federation, said that PCSOs were incapable of dealing with emergencies. “The public are being fooled,” he said. “We are sending people out there who are dressed as police officers. Every police officer who went to training school with me 30 years ago left with a life-saving certificate of some sort. I don’t know in this case if the two PCSOs could not swim, but not swimming was not an option in our training. We’ve got to be able to deal with all types of situations.

“We should do away with PCSOs because they are a failed experiment.In Greater Manchester we have taken on up to 400 PCSOs in the past 18 months but in the same period have reduced the number of police officers by more than 200. We should be investing in more police officers.”

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