not "do anything'' about cycle offences. Given the behaviour on our roads, the public has a good deal to complain about.

Cyclists, young and old, dart in and out of traffic, speed outrageously, ride up on the inside of cars in the most dangerous places, pass on corners and yellow lines, automatically go to the front of lines of traffic as if they have a right to pass waiting vehicles and pay no attention to anyone else's right to the roads. The roads are now being made uncomfortable for both Bermudians and visitors by bad driving, much of it on cycles.

Add to that a huge number of stolen cycles, many of them stripped and thrown overboard, and you have a cycle problem of major proportions. The problem clearly comes about because for too long we have been too tolerant. We now have a public crisis but we do not complain that we are responsible for allowing a crisis to develop, we complain that the Police do not "do anything''.

What happens when the Police do move against cycle offences? The people who say the Police do not "do anything'' start to complain about the Police. That kind of circle is almost impossible to deal with.

There can be no solution to the problem if the police are accused of harassing young people every time they do cycle checks. Anyone who uses the roads at all knows that there are any number of young people who ride outrageously and need to be checked. They have a right not to be harassed but they do not have a right to terrorise the streets and then demand to be left alone. Where checks are concerned, the Police have no magic detector and the innocent get checked because of the guilty.

In dealing with the epidemic of stolen cycles it is necessary to stop people to check for both stolen cycles and stolen parts. The truth is that many of the cycles are stolen by young people, therefore it is logical that they get stopped. Innocent young people who are stopped have a problem with their peers who are cycle thieves and not the Police. The Police are trying to assist innocent people, including young people, NOT to have their expensive cycle stolen. If they do not want to be stopped and do not want their cycles stolen, they should exert pressure on their peers not to steal cycles.

Last week the Police were accused of being "overzealous'' in their treatment of teenage cycle riders. We know that all of the Police are not angels but they have a difficult job to do. It seems to us that if we were to do a poll, the great majority of Bermudians would think the Police were not zealous enough. However we do understand why they back off in the face of accusations.

Far too often politicians try to be "user friendly'' by bashing the Police.

Politicians too have a duty to support the laws which they make and a duty to encourage people not to offend. Far too often they seem to be saying, "Go ahead. Do as you please. We can always blame it all on the Police.'' It is true that young people often have their first contact with the Police through cycle riding. If their parents taught them to respect the law and the rights of other road users, they would probably never have any contact with the Police. The parents who complain that the Police are "over zealous'' have generally failed in their own duty.