DEAR EDITOR - Sector policing, that wonder brain child of some unknown Home Office boffin, will never work in this town or any other unless one of two things happen.

1. Instantly transform the entire population back to the 1950's, where judges and magistrates gave realistic sentences, and police had the respect of the general public OR

2. Increase the staff of the police service from 2,151 to 21,510.

There are plenty of officers working pleasant day shifts from Monday to Friday, but your correspondent is correct, it's the thin blue line at night. The theory being that the less public there are about, the less police are required to police them.

There is no shortage of people wishing to join the police, in fact recruitment is at an all time high right now probably due to recruitment standards having been lowered to an all time low.

Retention is the main problem, with low starting pay and low morals, those with reasonable intelligence move on to pastures new, sick to death of being led by a management that has been brainwashed into worrying about Key Performance Indicators rather than the traditional caring and common sense approach to policing, which is all but forgotten.

P J Wilson,

Bromsgrove.