THE Home Secretary has announced that West Mercia Police are to receive £68,789 of taxpayers' money to finance a scheme to put Community Support Officers on the streets of West Mercia to assist regular police officers.

At the Labour Party Conference, he pledged a total of £19m pounds of taxpayers' money to implement this scheme.This is just an expensive Government gimmick.

These newly appointed Community Support Officers will have only limited powers and at the end of the day the police will be called upon to sort out more serious matters which are bound to occur.

This business of issuing fixed penalty notices to persons drunk and disorderly on the streets and for other offences such as criminal damage is a lot of nonsense.

The only answer to persons who become disorderly while drunk is off the streets and into the cells.

If these types of persons are issued with fixed penalty notices, they will probably give false names and addresses.

This extra taxpayers' money should be spent on police overtime so that policemen can be used in the evenings and at night-time to deal with the trouble we continually read about on certain estates and in city centres.

H DEAKIN, Malvern.