Letter: Letters: Fair cop

From P. A. HERMITAGE

I was dismayed to read in Feedback a brief item on the PoliceSpeak project
(6 June). Not only have you got your facts wrong (the linguistic experts
are from Wolfson College, Cambridge, not Oxford), you have committed the
additional sins of being both predictable and boring.

We have come to expect, from the lower end of the national press, inaccurate
and trivialised accounts of the project, resorting to predictable cliches
and sterotypes of the sub-‘Allo, Allo’ variety. It is particularly unfortunate
that a specialist magazine of your stature is capable of little more.

Without wishing to be seen as humourless, one need not be a scientist
or, indeed, a reader of your magazine to realise the importance of the
need to communicate unambiguously, particularly in an emergency where those
involved speak more than one language.

The PoliceSpeak team have broken much new and exciting ground; they
deserve more than to be patronised in your magazine.

P. A. Hermitage Assistant Chief Constable (Personnel) Kent County Constabulary,
Maidstone