Doughnuts are the key to falling crime So it appears, on a far grander scale, with the reduction in coppers. "Less is more" is an ancient adage in the sphere of acting, even if it never filtered through to Sir Donald Sinden or Su Pollard, and we must contemplate its application to the police. The fewer of them there are, and the less they are seen on the streets, the more precipitously the crime figures plummet. You wonder whether we need them at all. The Police Federation, last survivor of the militant trade union baronies, may well disagree. And in its defence, it is perfectly true that the police still have their uses. If you need a crime reference number to give a household insurer after one of those increasingly rare burglaries, where else to turn? Without the sound of sirens and the flashing of blue lights, how else could anyone know for sure that McDonald's is due to close in five minutes? You simply cannot put a price on the boost to self-esteem, for the stouter gentleman such as myself, of seeing them waddling about now and then, and feeling svelte. As for harassing ex-lovers, no one seems to do this better than the fuzz. Take the case of Katie Bowman. This Caucasian woman of 24 claims that after tiring of her constabulary beau, Pc Alexander Ash (one of the Bucks Ashes to Ashes, that family of retro, 1980s-style officers, it would appear), he threatened to make her life a misery. Pc Ash denies everything, including the relationship itself. None the less, by the eeriest happenstance, Miss Bowman was subsequently breathalysed no fewer than 70 times in and around High Wycombe. Since each blow into the bag exonerated her, we must presume that she is the most mal-coordinated driver humanity has known. And that includes my late grandmother, Mrs Bessie Norman, who celebrated finally passing her driving test at 75 by expertly steering her Austin Allegro into my grandfather's left knee. Disciplinary action has been instigated against several of those suspected of prosecuting their colleague's alleged masterplan for revenge, but this seems wilfully to miss the point. The problem with these officers is that, through no fault of their own, they were permitted to leave the nick. People bang on about wanting to see more police on the street, ignoring the fact that this is when they get into difficulties. This latest fall in the crime figures is deeply upsetting to the thinner blue line, and we all sympathise with their distress. Everyone needs to feel useful, and the link between non-policing and the blossoming of law-abiding behaviour must be painful. Their latest self-defensive wheezes are to source the drop to a change in the methodology used to record crimes (not a point I recall being made under New Labour, when the decline in crime coincided with rising officer numbers); and to warn doomily that the full effect of the cuts has yet to bite. Time will tell on that. For now, it seems crushingly plain that all this bother in High Wycombe would have been avoided if, rather than being released to pick up the poor woman every 10 minutes under suspicion of slowing at an amber light while under the influence, the officers had been ordered to spend even more time tackling the alarming surfeit of doughnuts in the station canteen.