AFTER reading about the police's attempts to become more efficient, they are still missing the point.

Being more efficient doesn't necessarily make you more effective. They decide how efficient, the public how effective.

The public understand it's not the police letting them down - but rather the constrictive system they have to operate in.

In a recent report by the WI, it was pointed out that crime has risen following the demise of the proper village bobby.

The BBC featured a village outside Basingstoke and showed how a village bobby had to cover 112 square miles on a motorbike.

No matter how efficient he is, he will never be able to effectively police that area.

DCI Rigby is right to say that kind of beat bobby is ineffective, but the beat bobby of 40 years ago - that's another story.

As a community grows, so should its police force. Instead the force has had to make use of what it had. This was called efficiency.

The beat bobby's area was extended to cover a greater area. Soon he needed motorised transport to cover his beat, which was very efficient but much less effective.

This is not a proper village policeman. Everyone knew the old style village bobby and he knew most of them. You never knew when that policeman was going round that corner.

Residents' Action Group

Cuddington

If you needed a policeman, you knew his beat and could find him quicker than it took to make a phone call.

The current bobby is not very effective but neither is the present system of:

1) wait for a crime to be committed

2) ring the police station

3) report the incident in as much detail as possible

4) wait while it is logged and passed on

5) wait while details are given to a response team, when available

6) see how long it takes to arrive.

The time taken varies but is longer when a shift change is imminent. The public don't think that is effective.

Targeting crime hotspots has proved effective in the past but has usually meant pulling officers from other duties and other villages.

Our area was targeted a while ago and it worked, for a time. As soon as the wrong-doers realised the targeting had moved on, the crime crept back to the way it was.

Hopefully the new projects announced by Superintendent Johns will restore the faith of the community.

What has been good is that the public have been informed through the Guardian.

Well done to DCI Rigby's elite burglary squad. We hope you might use this way of informing us about future successes.

Converted for the new archive on 13 March 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.