Paarmo
Having been on the recieving end of Police Observers experience, I'd rather it was a man of the cloth I was talking too.
Firstly, as has been said many times by Police Observers on here, because they talk and think the same way. They have the experience I had, and knew what I could and couldn't do. When it came to car chases, again, they knew how I was going to drive, they were trained the same way, therefore knew what I would and would not do.
There has to be trust between the 2 ends of the equation, because the bionic budgie jockey had done my job, I trusted him. Would I feel the same way about a civvie? No.
Civvies, yes, ok, some good, most avarage and some awful. Take Civvie Comms officers for example. I've thrown more than one out of a the Divisional Control Room I was supervising, for being useless, only to have some idiot further up the food chain put him back. Fortunatly, the majority of Communications staff in the large Force I worked in were Police Officers who rotated in and out of Comms duties. That mix of experience, of being on both ends made for better comms officers.
Leaving efficency aside, a civvie can do one job, and one only. If he/she is employed as a comms officer, thats it, if the front office Civvie goes sick, you can't redeploy, you can't get them to do both jobs. A Police Officer can and at my stations often did.
Last point against them is, and I can only speak for the Met, but our civvies pension was non contrabutory. So that has to be added to the cost, along with additional pay for weekends, nights etc, again not something you pay a police officer.
So in terms of flexability, experience and cost, there is no good reason to employ a civvie. The only argument in favour of it is to put more police on the streets, but as the numbers released would be a drop in the ocean, thats really not a good argument, when compared against the loss it would entail.