ACCORDING to a report (LET, December 30), a record number of offences are being brought to justice in the county. Figures show there were more than 33,000 'sanctioned' detections in the county in the year to November 30.

It would be interesting to know what exactly these 'detections' are.

Nationally only one in 35 serious crimes, results in the offender being caught and punished.

Hopefully included in these local statistics are the three balaclava-clad thugs who attacked security guards at the HSBC in Church Street, Blackburn, with an axe and escaped with a large quantity of cash.

Hopefully 'sanctioned,' alongside them, are the violent masked robbers armed with machetes and sledgehammers who escaped with tens of thousands of pounds from a bank in Abbey Street, Darwen after they threatened staff filling up a cash machine.

Fingers crossed that in those figures are the raiders who robbed Lloyds Bank in Blackburn escaping with yet more money, plus the armed gang that struck at a Post Office in Accrington, as well as the gang of balaclava-clad thieves who made off with a substantial amount of jewellery from a shop in King William Street after smashing the door and display cabinets with bats and hammers.

Many similar robberies have occurred throughout the county.

Sadly, East Lancashire residents are still awaiting the arrest of a hit-and-run driver who killed a 34-year-old man from Oswaldtwistle, walking home in the early hours of January 2004.

And in November of this year police again appealed for information to the rape of a young woman, that happened in Billinge Wood one Sunday afternoon in broad daylight, over nine years ago.

It would be pleasing to learn that the £90 most of us have to find every year, through non-criminal means, to pay via the council tax to the Lancashire Police Authority, is worth every penny. And not just squandered on politically motivated priorities, statistical trickery and government 'sanctioned' spin.

DAVID FORTUNE, Queen's Road, Blackburn.