I COULD not help thinking, “How times change” when I read Adam Trimingham’s latest column (The Argus, October 30).

In it he said that someone had told him there were only 16 officers on duty one Saturday night this month, and that was not nearly enough.

Compared with “back in the old days” it certainly was not.

During the time when my wife and I were members of the county’s Special Constabulary there were almost that number of “specials” out on duty in the city centre every Friday and Saturday night.

We might not have been as well trained as our regular colleagues but our presence definitely made a difference, especially with the public who were seeing police officers on almost every corner in The Lanes area of the city between 8pm and midnight every weekend evening.

I wonder how many are out there at weekends nowadays?

While on the subject of our constabulary I continue to get annoyed/frustrated/cheesed off by some of the statistics that come out of the force’s headquarters in Lewes.

According to another article in the same edition of The Argus 4,586 white people were stopped in Sussex, of which one in 7.6 were arrested.

When will the people, charged with the job of issuing these statistics, get it into their heads that there is no such thing as six tenths of a person?

The same thing goes regarding the numbers of black people; 614 stopped, one in 4.2 arrested. Exactly what does point two of a person look like?

All head and neck and nothing else?

Why on Earth can’t the force tell us exactly how many people finished up in custody, instead of churning out these meaningless numbers?

Eric Waters, Lancing