THE teething problems with the new police “Street Crime Database” were inevitable, but this new policy of empowering the public to hold Chief Constables to account is a vital first step to the election of new US-style “police commissioners”, who will add more weight to the power of public opinion about crime!

What I find most worrying about the debate over crime statistics, though, is the way senior police officers waste no time in apparently “rubbishing” any figures which conflict with their carefully prepared, and cherished, statistics of falling crime, and Bury officers are no exception.

All of us in some kind of service (although the police should never have changed from a “force” to a “service”) want to see some positive results from our efforts and the local “Bobby on the Beat”, working unsociable hours and in “harm’s way”, must feel this acutely.

Yet, senior officers are too quick to employ their undoubtedly costly “PR machine” to undermine a new street crime database which is essentially compiled from their own figures.

In the minds of the public, it just creates an image of confusion in the police, at best, or untrustworthiness, at worst, as the average person in the street will naturally think “there is no smoke without fire”.

In my view, the police should immediately consider saving money on PR and get more police on the beat, especially in those residential areas that possibly nurture and then “export criminals” to Bury town centre streets like, I'm sorry to say, the despicable Tottington thugs who were jailed recently after punching a girl in the face and kicking an innocent “Good Samaritan”.

Derek Brooks Tottington