Letter: Wrong message

I agree with Mark Campbell- Roddis (Letters, 18 June) that recent comments by the president of the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland may amount to scaremongering, but perhaps for different reasons.

It was reported the president suggested that, in view of public-spending constraints, affluent areas may have to deal with petty offences, such as vandalism, themselves, so resources could be focused on needier areas.

Mr Campbell-Roddis takes exception to this, but the point is that the kind of offences currently reported to police in middle-class areas are more likely to be ignored in less affluent neighbourhoods. Thus if police leave the residents of better-off areas to deal with such offences, then that will merely bring them into line with more deprived locations.

Of course, Mr Campbell- Roddis rightly makes the point that this will send out the wrong message to yobs and petty criminals, but that's precisely what happens outside his own domain.

STUART WINTON

Hilltown

Dundee