HEROIN is a problem in High Wycombe. Youngsters as young as 13 and 14 are offered the drug which can come as cheap as £10 for a smoke.

This is just one of the challenges former sector inspector for the town, George Wrigley, has faced during his three years here.

He said: "Certainly in three years I have noticed the cheapness and availability of heroin. It is progressively offered to younger people of 13 and 14 years old for as little as £10 a smoke."

He added: "In terms of use, it is now smoked so it is easier to use. It is highly addictive and I find it frustrating to have someone in who is a heroin addict with a tremendous addiction being charged with a number of crimes and all they are thinking about is where they will get their next £10 hit."

But the newly appointed chief inspector said that things are looking up with the help of stronger links between the police and other agencies such as health projects to help treat addicts.

The father-of-two said: "We have to try to break the cycle. They just go back out and break into a car or do a burglary."

It costs the police around £60 to £70 just to complete a crime report on a burglary when all the addict is after is a £10 hit.

Chief Insp Wrigley said the force is fighting the problem not only with stronger communication to other organisations but also with the education of younger children and students.

Education takes different forms but Chief Insp Wrigley highlights one of the unusual techniques of one of his officers.

"He pops a Polo mint down his pants and then offers it to a student. They obviously turn away in disgust but the point is that is exactly where dealers keep their drugs," he said.

Chief Insp Wrigley takes his battle against crime very seriously and has been fighting against burglary and car crime in problem hot spots with the help of a dedicated team of officers.

The number of reported burglaries has fallen from 910 between 1998 and 1999 to 691 between 2000 to 2001.

Auto crime has also been substantially reduced from 531 in 1998 to 1999 and 231 in 2000 to 2001.

Chief Insp Wrigley attributes some of this success to crime reduction projects in areas suffering specific problems such as Castlefield, Sands and Downley.

The Home Office gave the police £5,000 to tackle burglary in Castlefield with the aim of making people's homes more secure.

He said: "There was tremendous community interest and crime started to drop almost overnight."

He said that they had been getting between 30 and 40 reports of burglaries but after the exercise, which included giving people special pens to postcode their property, the figure dropped to around ten to 20 offences.

Following the success of the project, the police were able to bid for and win £150,000 of funding from the Home Office to fight crime in the area.

One of the criteria for this was that the area had to have twice the national average number of burglaries.

Chief Insp Wrigley said: "People think of the Chilterns as a wealthy area but it has great pockets of deprivation."

And he admitted that although burglary and auto crime rates had been reduced, overall reported crime has stayed the same.

The figure of reported crimes for the Wycombe sector for 2000 to 2001 was 7,500 which matches figures from 1997 to 1998.

But he said that the rules on recording crimes had changed and now it was what he termed a more 'ethical system'.

For instance, a number of cheques stolen from the same book used to be counted as one crime, but would now count as separate incidents.

Meanwhile, common assault and public order offences are now logged as crimes but were not included in recorded crime figures before.

Moving into a supervisory role at the command control centre responsible for answering 999 calls, radio contact with patrol cars and dispatching officers, dealing with public and internal calls, the new chief inspector will be taking on quite different challenges.

He said that police targets from the government can sometimes threaten the quality of the service the public get when they call the control room to record a crime.

He added: "We are supposed to answer 999 calls within ten seconds but if we put all resources into that we can end up missing out on other things like the radio service we operate to patrol cars.

"There will be people phoning up saying 'we haven't got an emergency but we have to speak to the police'.

"It's a frustration for us because it is the quality that suffers and it is quality contact with the public that is also relevant.

"The better the quality the more likely the public will come back and help us. Quality promotes confidence in the service.

"It makes it very difficult because we just become a reporting centre, rather than providing a service.

"Equally we have to look at things which are call business and what isn't call business. Is a cat stuck up a tree a priority?

"Someone phoned up for an out-of-hours chemist and they think 'we'll ring the police they will know'.

"Are we an information service or here to reduce crime with community partners?

"These are the kinds of challenges we will face."