ACCORDING to a recent Argus article, police have been "stopping riders of e-scooters to let them know they are breaking the law", something that must

have caused many of its readers to ask themselves why these people weren't issued with fines and, possibly, had their machines confiscated.

After all, they had all very clearly contravened the regulations regarding the use of these machines.

Well, going by the photos on the Argus website, the personnel involved were not warranted police officers, who have powers of arrest, but community

support officers who do not.

Consequently all they could do was to tell these riders that it was "very naughty of them to ride them anywhere other than on private land and not to do it again".

They then had no choice other than to stand aside and watch the "scooterists" ride away, who were probably laughing their heads off at the apparent ineffectiveness of our police service to do anything about their illegal activity.

So the question remains, if Sussex Police are serious about cracking down on illegal e-scooter activity, before even more pedestrians start suffering

serious injuries when they come into contact with one of these machines, why did it not deploy officers who could have stopped these riders in their tracks and not ones who were powerless to do anything practical about the blatant law breaking that was taking place before their very eyes?

Eric Waters

Lancing