PLINK! Do we hear the sound of the penny dropping at last at police headquarters?

For after a survey showed that Lancashire Constabulary came joint bottom nationally in a poll of how satisfied people are with their local force, perplexity ensued among the top cops.

After all, Lancashire Police were far from the worst at catching criminals and bringing them to book -- though, by any chalk, its better-than-average detection rate of 26 per cent could hardly be called adequate, especially by the victims of all the unsolved crimes. Even so, Lancashire people suffer fewer robberies, burglaries and vehicle crimes than those elsewhere and, last year, there were fewer of them.

So why are folk so jarred off with the bobbies' performance? Why did only 42 per cent of those surveyed think the county police were doing a good job when some other forces had ratings in the mid-60s?

"We are endeavouring to find out just why the public has the opinion it does," said Detective Superintendent Mike Barton.

But if you ask me, they have a good idea already of what's behind it, or at least some of it -- the speed camera backlash.

Why else is there to be a freeze next year on the installation of more cameras in already-saturated Lancashire?

And now, in order to convince disgruntled motorists that cameras are not about waging indiscriminate war on them to raise revenue through fines, we have Mr Barton talking of Lancashire becoming the first force in the country to turn on speed cameras at night -- providing there's government approval and that timing mechanisms can be fitted in them.

Mr Barton, I think, need not wait for the government nod or the timer technology to be developed -- if the experience of my friends with those camera-detecting gadgets in their cars is anything to go by.

For several have found that while on many occasions most are switched off during the day, many such ones that they have driven past again at night have been turned on. They reckon that it's a revenue-raising ploy by police who surmise that drivers are more likely to go over the speed limit -- and get themselves clocked and fined -- at night when the roads are less busy (and, surely, safer) than they are by day.

And if it is the case, surely, the same police going round turning on the cameras by night could easily go round and turn them off, could they not?

Yet, let us welcome these potential U-turns and hope they are not just part of a disingenuous charm offensive by a force that's finally woken up to the harm that its speed camera overkill has done to its relations with the public.