If the police want our young people to respect the law, they have to start respecting it themselves and enforce it where it is being so blatantly and regularly flouted. Showing they care less, they may then begin to use whatever new trendy theory they have on how to make young people do so too and demonstrate a capacity to walk the walk as well as talking the talk.

I'm not holding my breath. That's 75 people covering a city of 32 boroughs, working how many hours a week? We'll be lucky if there is even one cop assigned to Walthamstow (Population 225000+) at any one time. He'll soon get in the swing of things and join his colleagues in doing nothing and drinking tea.

If this really was the Met's no 1 priority (how many times have we heard those words on various topics) we would have seen a lot more action on gangs already.

I don't want any more gestures. I actually want the police we already have in our borough to get off their backsides and do their jobs. Firstly, they should regain control of the streets by ridding the High Street of the cd and shell game scammers. These are people we were told about by Cllr Afzal Akram, in this paper, on 17 January 2008, when he said:

"I would urge anyone considering buying an illegal DVD to consider the fact that they are funding organised crime like prostitution, people trafficking and drug smuggling."

Assuming it was the police who briefed Mr Akram, why have they done virtually nothing about arresting these people and fighting the funding organised criminals linked with the prostitution, people trafficking and drug smuggling that we are told to be concerned about?

Either Mr Akram had been told a lie and spun it further, or our local police are not worth the salaries we are paying them, leaving the job to a bunch of powerless and ineffective people in red sweatshirts. I want the police to co-ordinate their activities with the Immigration Service and pull in all these people. There is no way they can be behaving in accordance with the terms of their permission to be in the UK or exercising any rights under EU law. They should be removed from our streets in a joint police and immigration service operation because their continued organised criminal presence in the UK is not conducive to the public good. They are a serious public nuisance, and a daily reminder of how rubbish the police really are at upholding the law.

Technomist, I agree about the growing level of visible, open crime in the High Street. The DVD sellers have been there for a couple of years or more; I first noticed the shell-game a few months ago.

It looks as if police tolerance of one lot of crooks has encouraged another lot to have a go. I'd guess we are going to see plenty more soon.

In the same way, the dodgy DVD sellers are harmless-looking Chinese people, but the shell-gamers are tough-looking men. When i spoke to one of them I saw a couple of others closing in.

It's obvious to everyone else that if you don't crack down on this kind of thing quickly, it gets out of control. Why not to the police?

We're losing our High Street.