THE back of a police car on a Friday night is a time and place usually reserved for bar brawlers, burglars and other breakers of the law. So it felt strange voluntarily climbing into one outside Malvern police station, writes Jon di Paolo

Anticipation was high as I belted up, checked I was armed with a hefty torch, reflective jacket and notebook and waited for the duty sergeant to finish checking the car's impressive array of lights.

However, half-formed visions of breakneck, siren-wailing chases in pursuit of crack-crazed villains attempting to steal the week's takings from Waitrose were soon dispelled by a much more sedate reality.

Geoff Martin, sergeant in charge of the other officers on the shift, had originally intended to put me in the back of a van doing the rounds, only to have his van driver 'pinched' by another division.

He was left with the task of driving me around various "hotspots" in the area for which C Division is responsible. This stretches 30- odd miles down from Holt Fleet to Eldersfield and 10 across from the Wyche Cutting to Powick.

Sgt Martin cannot tell me how many officers cover the area but says he will welcome the planned influx of 300 officers expected to join the West Mercia division.

By April 2003 the force should have a total of 2,400 officers, which will bring it into line with the national average of one officer for every 554 residents. At the moment, the figure is one to 726. A minimum of 30 of these will work in the south Worcestershire area, although specific locations have not yet been allocated.

For the moment, though, the existing stalwarts have to cope and the one sitting next to me explained that the first part of our journey was to involve "targeted policing", meaning we were to cruise round areas where problems are known to happen. These include hotspots for vandalism and a short-cut for "revellers".

Sgt Martin is quick to point out that "nine out of ten of them are as good as gold" but 23 years' experience of policing in Malvern and Worcester have shown him many times the devastation too much alcohol can wreak.

However, by this stage no one had drunk enough to be attempting vandalism, violence, nudity, or any other misdeed - not where we are anyway - so we move on to the next spot, where two security guards are keeping watch over Malvern Hills College, which has been suffering persistent vandalism.

No action there either - potential wreckers doubtless deterred by the sight of the guards' white four-wheel-drive vehicle parked prominently near the entrance.

We check some more "hotspots" further afield, but Malvern is living up to its reputation of being a villain-free haven. It enjoys a crime rate of just 15.6 crimes per 1,000 people, against a national average of 101 crimes per 1,000, according to figures from the Crime Concern Survey. This makes it the second safest place to live in the UK.

During our patrol, messages have been crackling over the CB about a domestic disturbance in which violence and threats have been made to a woman who now fears for the safety of herself and her children. When the sergeant drops me off there, we find friends and neighbours gathered on the victim's doorstep. However, the woman fears a return visit from her tormentor and wants to take her children to a refuge for the night.

She agrees to let me be present for the statement-taking, during which the officer painstakingly records her account of the night's events. His friendly manner and apparently inexhaustible patience throughout the interview, which lasted about an hour, was all the more laudable in light of the fact he and his colleague had been trying to resolve the situation for around five hours.

The fact that the dispute involves family made it risky to pursue the perpetrator, who might very well be provoked to worse behaviour towards the vulnerable mother and children by police intervention. That, however, was no reason to let them get away with it.

It seemed to me as though there are only two wrong answers and no right one, which reminds me of a dichotomy between response times and "visible" policing Sgt Martin outlined earlier on: people want to see more bobbies on the beat, but they also want them to respond quickly when they dial 999, and the only way to do that is in a car.

Once the woman's statement has been taken and she has a confirmed place in the refuge, we head off back to the station via the Lighthouse nightclub. Again, there is no sign of any trouble and we head back to the station, where one of the officers recounts a gruesome beating with an iron bar that left a man in hospital and a pool of blood on Barnard's Green roundabout.

Fortunately, in Malvern such events remain relatively rare.