THE priorities of Herts Police have this month proved ludicrous.

One day last week three police cars with their lights flashing and sirens blaring hurtled past The Comet office in Stevenage.

A quick phone call to the police by a Comet reporter revealed that two customers of TJ’s caf� in the High Street had left without paying for their food.

When looking at this incident in isolation, the police’s response seems highly excessive.

But it is also absurd, given that three weeks prior to this the same police force responded to a 999 call from a grandmother who had found a double-barrelled shotgun in woods in Stevenage by sending a police community support officer to the scene on a bus.

Are these two examples of taxpayers’ money well spent? I think not.

While Herts Police boasts on its website that it attends more than 90 per cent of emergency calls within 15 minutes, this does not necessarily indicate a good performance.

It is simply no good if the 90 per cent includes a majority of petty crimes, while the 10 per cent includes a number of major incidents.

A breakdown of the crimes reported and the time it took to respond to these emergency calls is necessary in order to give a true picture of the police force’s performance.

While Herts Police prefers to emphasise the 90 per cent success rate, it is details of the remaining 10 per cent which will surely prove most telling.