the briefest reading of the Police Core Functions Exercise report would immediately dispel it.

The report, released on Friday and based largely on comments made by serving officers who took part in the exercise last year, is riddled with complaints about plunging staffing levels, onerous shift patterns, lack of resources and the-then lack of a new contract.

There appears to be a willingness on the part of officers to take on new roles and to embrace new community-oriented forms of policing. But, the report makes clear, transforming the service will be next to impossible without adequate staff.

Indeed, the most salient feature in this report is the fact that the uniformed branches of the service -- those officers who most regularly come into contact with the public -- are the least experienced and the least trained.

Historically, rookies have been "put on the street'', but usually with guidance from senior officers. It now appears to be a case of the blind leading the blind.

Responsibility for this lies with those in command of the Police -- both in the Service and in the former and current Governments -- who allowed manning levels to sink to unacceptable levels at the same time that disillusioned veteran officers were flooding out.

Other causes were well meaning attempts to improve the community policing role of the service, which saw veteran officers made Parish constables and REACH officers under Commissioner Colin Coxall. This may have been done in the expectation that new local officers -- overseas recruitment was stopped by the then-Government a year earlier -- would replace those being transferred.

Nonetheless, the result was a stretched uniform branch.

Similar efforts to calm traffic, through a special traffic enforcement unit and to cut street drug dealing through the "task force'' also cut into the uniformed branches.

At the same time, the use of resources to man "static'' duties at Government House, the courts, the Premier's house and Parliament are a further waste of manpower for jobs which are either unnecessary or could be outsourced to security services, thus allowing officers to do their real jobs.

With the latter exception, all of these moves are symptomatic of crisis management, meaning staff must be continually deployed to plug one leak after another. It is not, in the words of the Core Functions Review, a "stable'' situation. Nor is it conducive to good policing.

No-one would deny the importance of successful local recruiting or the value of having local officers at every level of the service. But the facts have to be faced: Overseas officers are required as quickly as possible.

The review acknowledges that the process of bringing in new officers now underway will take four to six months, meaning there will be no relief until the end of the summer.

Police Commissioner Jean-Jacques Lemay deserves credit for initiating this review and publishing it -- warts and all. Now he, Government House and the Government must move on it and act on the problems identified.

It is a shame that it has taken this report -- a literal cry for help -- to move the Government to action. In the meantime, the public must give the Police the support it needs to carry out its duties. This report suggests the Service is moving in the right direction provided it is given the resources it needs.