Service yesterday when she announced plans to recruit some 45 officers from abroad.

This decision comes after a long and often tortuous effort to re-evaluate the role of the Service and to determine if it is really using its staff in the most effective way.

The answer, Ms Cox said yesterday, is that the Service should focus on preventing and detecting crime. Up until now, too many of its officers have not been doing that.

The news that officers will now be moved away from static guard duty roles and other areas such as prosecutions is long overdue. Trained Police officers should be placed in roles where they are active and involved in the community, not commanding desks.

It is not clear if the decision to merge the Parish constable function into the three divisions will be effective; it seems inevitable that community policing will always take second place to arrests and answering calls to incidents unless it is an officer's sole responsibility.

Nor is it certain that giving Customs more responsibility for interdiction of drugs will work. There is no doubt that some Customs officers are excellent, but the Narcotics department has a long tradition of good work and good contacts with overseas agencies which are crucial in stopping drug importers.

Nor should narcotics officers be reduced solely to arresting minor street dealers. Long-term investigations leading to arrests of drug kingpins must remain a major part of their work.

But overall, these ideas for making the Service more effective are welcome. It shows that the Service, after several years of uncertainty and plummeting morale, has a direction and a purpose.

Ms Cox's proposals to reduce the overall size of the Police establishment are a bit of a mystery.

If moving officers from static duties to more active ones still results in a reduced presence on the streets, it will send a disastrous message to criminals. Getting officers on the streets must be the priority.

Nor is it clear why the Government did not start the process of overseas recruiting -- which with the best will in the world is bound to be drawn out -- earlier. Even with the proposed changes, it was obvious months ago that some overseas officers would be necessary. The calls for overseas recruiting were not hysterical, as Ms Cox states, but based on common sense and there is no reason why the effort could not have started at the same time that the core functions' review was underway.

Only time will tell if the plans to bring officers to the Island on short-term secondments will work. For some officers it will be a feather in their caps to have worked overseas, while others may believe they are coming for the easy life. Issues such as differences in pay will also have to be resolved or they will cause deep resentment.

Ms Cox is right to attempt to recruit officers who reflect the Island's ethnic diversity -- bringing in officers who are all from one ethnic background would be a mistake. However, it ought not to be the only criteria.

Recruiting officers with experience in areas where the Service is now weak should be a priority, but the major focus should be to find the best possible officers who can pass on their expertise during their time here and leave a better Service when they go.