SO THE probe into the shenanigans surrounding the stripper in the police headquarters bar is coming to the crunch, after an investigation lasting four months and involving officers from 14 forces.

But whatever the outcome into the goings-on that night at Lancashire Constabulary's HQ, one upshot is already proving highly unsatisfactory - for the public, if not also the three Accrington officers at the centre of the affair.

These men have been suspended from duty all the time the inquiry has been going on.

But it is not whether such a matter should be officially investigated that is the question. The force, after all, has a responsibility to preserve its probity from scandal.

Nor is it the length of time that this probe has taken, since the supervising Police Complaints Authority has explained the reasons for that.

Rather, it is the necessity of these three officers being suspended all that time.

It has cost more than £20,000 in wages for them to do nothing.

Surely, in a case that, if it involves any disciplinary offence at all, entails only alleged impropriety rather than accusations that would warrant automatic suspension - such as, for instance, corruption or falsification of evidence - it is not imperative that officers should be prevented from working for so long at such wasteful expense.

Could not these officers have carried on doing useful work in the meantime, if not in their usual roles, then in ones to which they were redeployed?

It certainly has not been in the public interest - and, perhaps, not their own - for them to have been idly kicking their heels all the while.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.