AS a retired police officer, I feel I have to take you to task over the recent report on police sickness in the North Yorkshire Police Force (February 15), especially the unnecessary caption relating to the photograph of York police headquarters.

Normally whenever your newspaper reports on sickness in industry, or even public-sector working, lost working days are used. Yet in this article you chose to use working hours. What was the hidden agenda, or was it just meant as a cheap shot with a bit of sensationalism thrown in?

Police officers in North Yorkshire work a shift pattern involving nine or ten-hour tours of duty, not eight hours as your article intimates.

Even taking this inaccuracy into account 60.6 hours per officer using an eight-hour shift system equates to 7.6 days. However if you use a nine-hour working day this drops to 6.7 days and using a ten-hour working day equates to 6.06 days' sickness per officer.

When this is put into perspective, including injuries on duty and officers on long-term sick leave, I think your readers will agree that this figure is quite low when considering the dangers faced by officers each day.

I haven't included the fact that police officers do not get paid for the first half-hour of overtime worked per day; so in effect, over the six days of an officer's working week, he or she could have worked 59 hours, three of which are unpaid. What group of private-sector workers would accept working practices like this?

Another point of interest is that police regulations make it a disciplinary offence for a police officer to turn up for work when he or she is ill.

Stephen C Bushby,

Hart Hill Crescent,

Full Sutton,

York.

Updated: 10:49 Saturday, February 18, 2006