SUSSEX Police want to know how the public thinks it should tackle crime in the future (Argus, May 17).

The force wants to know how they can interact with the public.

My answer: In person, face to face.

It wants to know how they should be responding to incidents.

My answer: In person, face to face.

It wants to know how those reporting crimes would want to contact officers.

My answer: In person, face to face.

The only way these answers can turn into reality is to do want the vast majority of the public want; police officers patrolling our streets and actually making contact with the public that they serve.

The police are always saying that such a way of working is ineffective and inefficient; of course it’s not.

Villains know that they can carry out thefts, muggings and assaults on our streets with impunity, the chance of a police officer being anywhere in the vicinity and able to apprehend them being virtually zero.

The Argus article continued by saying that the force now assigns officers to neighbourhoods so they can police the county “more efficiently” and cut costs.

Perhaps any Argus readers who have actually seen any of these “neighbourhood officers” out and about could write in and let the rest of us know what they look like.

It also mentioned that PCSOs are now predominately office based and working in groups, which I find very strange as, not so long ago, they were being described as “the eyes and ears of the police”.

What on earth can they see and hear if they are now stuck away in offices, far removed from personal contact with the public?

What comes next? Police community support officers assistants who actually do get out and about until such time as they too get to stay indoors and are replaced by police community support officers’ assistants deputies?

That would do wonders for the unemployment figures but would be yet another excuse for cutting back even more on an actual police presence on our streets.

Perhaps we all need to become special constables and do the job ourselves.

One in every street in the county should be enough.

Eric Waters, Ingleside Crescent, Lancing