THERE is an increasing and depressing perception among many people who ought to know better that the police are somehow our enemy.

The force is no longer there to protect us, say the cynics. It is there to take nitpicking action against otherwise law-abiding people for trivial non-offences, or it fails to attend scenes of crime while warning the victims that if they attempt to catch the criminals themselves they run the risk of prosecution.

How vital, then, that we should have officers such as Gary Wells and Beverley Pitchford to show us that the true police ethos is alive and well.

The Swindon PCs have been rightly commended by Chief Constable Elizabeth Neville for disarming a man as he tried to hammer a kitchen knife into his own chest. Because of them and their willingness to risk everything, a man has his life and the hope of a better future when otherwise he might have had neither. And because of them and officers like them, the rest of us might hold our tongues the next time we are about to say something dismissive .

They are a credit to the uniform.