So Cheshire police officers are to be equipped with body cameras.

Hurrah...it’s a great idea providing they haven’t paid some grossly inflated price for them as they did when acquiring iPads. I seem to recall they lashed out around £1,300 a pop when the rest of us were paying about £400 sighting ‘training support’ as a major cost factor.

Most kids over the age of eight would have taken them through the basics in exchange for a ride in a squad car.

I’m not sure what it is about public services that drives them to pay over the odds for supplies.

If the NHS isn’t paying more for over the counter medicine than the general public it’s spending zillions on IT packages that don’t do the job.

But I digress. Body cams are a no-brainer. If some idiot appears in court proclaiming ‘It’s not me what done it, guv’ the police won’t need to organise an identity parade to prove his guilt. Simply turn on the body cam and hey-presto caught in the act.

Just a word of caution however – officers should check their recordings before attending court or it could prove embarrassing.

I have yet to see any photo produced by Cheshire Police that didn’t feature Commissioner Keane centre stage.

You don’t want to stand in the witness box claiming that the image about to be displayed will prove conclusively who committed the heinous crime only to see a life size portrait of your boss grinning from the overhead projector. I doubt promotion would be a major feature of your career path.

With reported crime up 32.9 per cent, anything that aids our front line Bobbies in their duty has to be welcome. Frankly, I would have thought body cams should have been introduced years ago but better late than not at all.

If a suspect claims he or she was assaulted by the arresting officer, we won’t have to wait long to watch the video. Similarly an officer attacked in the course of his or her duty will have the evidence immediately available providing of course they turn the damn camera on.

Having funded the cost of this ‘innovation’ we don’t want a litany of excuses why it failed to capture the vital image. Unless of course it does feature Commissioner Keane in which case...bin it.

By Vic Barlow