Hove will lose more of its identity when its police merge with Brighton, according to a community beat bobby.

PC Barry Jeffcoat retires in July with more than a tinge of sadness about the planned amalgamation, scheduled for the end of next month.

He said: "As a resident of Hove and a police officer here I feel we have been hijacked.

"There are quite a few officers asking why it is needed.

"Hove has always been a nice town with a good force.

"The area I patrol, Portslade, will in future be controlled by people in Brighton.

"They are a lot further away and don't know what is going on here.

"We lost identity when the two councils amalgamated into one authority and more will go when the police join forces."

PC Jeffcoat, married with two children and four grandchildren, is hanging up his cuffs after 28 years' service, mostly in Hove.

A former pupil of Knoll School in Hove, he first worked for furniture and upholstery firms before joining the police on £25 a week.

His first big case came when he was seconded to the Brighton police vice squad to prosecute four men following the seizure of 35,000 pornographic films and photographs from a Hove flat.

It was the biggest haul in the UK at the time and led to the ringleader being jailed for 18 months.

There was family pressure for PC Jeffcoat to quit the service in 1983 when he was one of several officers injured by fans when Brighton and Hove Albion played host to Chelsea.

PC Jeffcoat suffered a broken back in an incident seen on TV by one of his sons. He wanted his father to quit but could not persuade him.

PC Jeffcoat was off work for a year and returned to an office job briefly but getting back out on the streets was his goal.

He said: "I wanted to get back to grass-roots policing and to meet the public again."

In 1991, he took on the Portslade Village beat with its office in an underground garage in Stonery Road.

Constant flooding forced a move to an old council rent office in Easthill Way, where PC Jeffcoat remains based today.

At 54, he said he had made good friends in the force and the community and would miss them when he went. He had enjoyed his career but was glad to be retiring.

He had not always approved of some of the changes which had come his way and thought reducing the number of community beat officers was one mistake.

He said: "There were 12 in our area and now there are four."

And, he said, joining Hove and Brighton into one bigger division was another: "Making things larger isn't always right and, with police work, it often means you lose a lot of that personal touch."

The Argus reported yesterday how private security guards are being used by Sussex Police to guard crime scenes and free bobbies for front-line duties.

Officers from Guildford-based security firm Evensure Management are on immediate notice 24 hours a day to guard scenes, a task usually undertaken by uniformed police officers.