I once had a professional interest in incidents such as the one reported in "Police didn't want to know" (The Argus, December 30), which described the non-reaction of Sussex Police when Ellen Kramer-Herman reported a vehicle colliding with her car in Saltdean and failing to stop.

Solving and prosecuting these types of offences is not exactly rocket science. Empirical research has shown that the drivers who commit these and similar offences are often the high-risk drivers likely at some time to be involved in "road death and those collisions involving serious or slight injuries". Drivers who drive on after collisions are often uninsured, drunk, driving a stolen vehicle or already wanted by the police.

However, why did the reported incident give me a sense of dj vu? The answer is in The Argus, February 6, which contains details of a similar incident.

In that earlier case, the Chief Constable of Sussex, Ken Jones, promised to reverse a policy where officers had refused to investigate a hit-and-run offence because it "was not deemed serious enough". Mr Jones was reported to have said: "My view of policing is that people... should have their incidents investigated and we will reverse this policy." Has the policy been "reversed" again?

I cannot remember the details of all the fail-to-stop incidents I investigated successfully during my career but I can remember those where my investigations failed the innocent parties because they can be counted on the fingers of one hand. The law-abiding public engages in a contract with the police by paying tax, community charge, insurance, road fund licences and so on and by being the eyes and ears of the police. In return, it expects a professional service without excuses or platitudes.

Having once been proud of my past (I retired from Sussex Police in 1996 after 25 years with Traffic Division), I now find I tend to redirect a conversation which asks what I did before my present job.

So, Ian Jeffrey and Ken Jones, make me proud of my past, once again - please.

-Brian Pryor, Greenways Crescent, Shoreham