YOUR item (Evening News, Monday, January 24) referring to Community Support Officers and their task of walking the beat to deal with "quality of life" issues and provide reassurance to the public needs to be challenged.
There is little evidence to support this view put forward by Home Office Officials or senior police officers.
They naturally neither live nor work in areas generally provided with these officials, who have now been joined on our roads by VOSA "stoppers" and Highways Agency "traffic officers" both of whom are dressed in similar uniforms and have been given some police powers.
Reassurance, if indeed that is needed, is provided by visible trained, sworn police officers operating from police stations which are open to the public day and night.
What is also required is a police and criminal justice system that is not driven by false economies and political correctness which is now sadly often the case.
As a "business person" whose premises were recently criminally damaged I was not reassured by the appearance of two Community Support Officers, to do what exactly?
Actually the reverse was the case, particularly as these "officials" each cost a staggering 90 per cent of the cost of a trained police officer.
M BROOKES,
Inkberrow.
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