THAT'S it. Liz Hurley has spoken. The star who is to acting what Judi Dench is to bricklaying has spoken. The streets of London, says Hugh Grant's ex, are more dangerous than those of New York.

That's because, the pneumatic actress continues, there are lots of cops in the Big Apple. "In America, uniformed cops eat in coffee shops, diners and restaurants, and I always feel safer having them around."

Yes, but after stuffing their face with pasta and doughnuts, what use would they be chasing after a 19-year-old mugger? I suppose they would just shoot him. Ah, zero tolerance at its best.

Liz is one of several celebrities to have been robbed on London's mean streets; eight years ago she was set upon by a gang of knife-wielding girls.

Angela Rippon was mugged twice in Notting Hill. And Joan Collins' daughter Tara Newley had her £7,000 Cartier watch snatched from her in the very same borough (this is obviously a very different Notting Hill to that nice, white middle class area featured in Hugh Grant's film of the same name, screened the other night).

Joan has decided to settle permanently in New York as she feels safer there. (That is saying something after September 11.) Our loss is America's gain. "Mayor Giuliani did such a fabulous job cleaning up the streets of New York," said the 69-year-old actress. That fabled zero tolerance again.

But last week new evidence suggested it was just that: a fable.

In the journal Homicide Studies (always a favourite bedtime read), research proposed that the amazing fall in the American murder rate has nothing to do with lots of cops and no tolerance. Murders fell because emergency medical services have vastly improved. It is the paramedic and the surgeon's skills that Americans have to thank, not detectives or politicians.

This finding has been ignored by certain sections of the media who suggest every problem, no matter how complex, has a simple answer. For them, there is but one solution to crime: more bobbies on the beat.

Zero tolerance works, they say, dismissing too the fact that it failed spectacularly in the North East of England.

I fear we are about to have the same call repeated locally after reading Monday night's Evening Press. This contained the news that Rufforth Post Office had been targeted by a raider with a baseball bat - the third attempted robbery there in two years. Inside, there was another report of a civic-minded citizen dialling North Yorkshire Police to report suspicious behaviour, and simply not getting through.

The thuggery of the sort inflicted on the staff at Rufforth Post Office will not be stopped by more bobbies on the beat - but fewer. Even if every available officer was sent out in a panda car, the odds of a patrolling policeman coming across a village post office raid in England's biggest county is next to nil.

However, a squad of officers using their intelligence network and analysing previous crime patterns might develop a strong enough case against the perpetrators to put them away.

As for no one answering the phone at North Yorkshire Police, this is unforgivable, but has nothing to do with a lack of staff. It is a recurrent system failure and must be sorted immediately, otherwise people will ask why bother to report crime if police cannot be bothered to pick up the blower?

There is a place for better community policing, and the local force has recognised that.

But just as we shouldn't blame the police for rising crime, neither should we expect the force to clean up our streets by deploying scarce manpower to hang around in coffee shops.

Updated: 10:25 Wednesday, September 04, 2002