REGARDING your report headed "Cue attack row: Police's reply" (LET, August 17) I felt anger and disgust at the excuses given by Superintendent Mike Barton, all of which smacked of apathy.

This type of reply is "armchair" policing at its worst.

This senior police officer will be well aware of the types of offences that can be committed under the Public Order Act 1986, which covers the particular type of incident being committed by the young boy in question and his friends.

More so, there is the common law offence of breach of the peace.

If the police had responded initially to shopkeeper Peter Bretherton's complaints, a young boy would not have suffered a broken arm, a law-abiding person would not have committed a criminal act and a seriously-ill old man may have died in more comfortable circumstances.

It is a terrible shame in this age of state-of-the-art technology that this matter was not better handled.

All of the criminal legal system is geared up to helping the wrong-doers of this world as against the victims.

Perhaps Mr Bretherton is one of the few wrong-doers coming out of this with a slight degree of credibility.

W LEAVER, Everton, Blackburn.