Nigel Hastilow: Vital link is lost as blue lamps go out across the Black Country

Those symbolic lights, which used to shine from the police stations and reassure the rest of us that there was a bobby about when we needed one, are being turned off one by one, writes Nigel Hastilow.

West Midlands Police think we need a modern internet-based system instead. The sort, apparently, where you can send your local bobby a message on Twitter and she will come running.

You might think they cannot be serious but they are. The force wants to save £3 million out of its annual budget by shutting up shop at no fewer than 27 of its 41 'front offices' across the West Midlands.

The rest will only be open during office hours apart from one in central Birmingham which will provide a 24-hour service and four being run by volunteers 'offering the community an opportunity to engage locally with neighbourhood officers'.

Of course £3m is a lot of money and if it were really to lead to an improved crime-fighting and public-protection service then perhaps we wouldn't have a lot to complain about.

But let's see that money in context. It represents just over one half of one per cent of the police force's £543.56m annual budget.

It's £700,000 less than it cost us to hold an unnecessary by-election to choose a new candidate for the unnecessary post of Police and Crime Commissioner for the West Midlands.

In other words, it might save a bit of money but if that was the real aim they could find a dozen more sensible ways of cutting costs.

And what will we lose as the police slam the door in the public's face in places like Smethwick, Wednesbury, Old Hill and Halesowen let alone even bigger centres like Dudley and Walsall?

We lose one of the last tangible links between the police and the communities they are supposed to serve.

True, the days of the 'Dixon of Dock Green' bobby on the beat and the reliable old blue lamp are long gone. Instead, we are far more likely to encounter some automaton with a grim face who is bristling with weaponry and paramilitary uniforms.

As a result of this transformation of our officers into some sort of UN-style peace-keeping force, trust and confidence in the police has been ebbing away for years.

Few of us these days consider the police are on our side let alone friendly, neighbourhood coppers.

Closing so many police stations destroys one of the few remaining links between us, the tax-paying public who, apart from anything else, pay for the police, and the officers themselves. We don't get to chat to them on street corners and few of us would dare to ask the time of someone toting a Heckler & Koch MP5 sub-machine gun.

Yet the link between the police and the community they serve should be the one essential element in all they do.

The police need law-abiding citizens to help them keep the peace, root out trouble, catch offenders and support them in their work.

Closing police stations will break the connection and short-circuit the whole thing. We won't know our police officers, we won't be able to talk to them, we will trust them even less.

Britain's most expensive elected representative, the new Police and Crime Commissioner David Jamieson, claims keeping offices open to the public was fine in the days before mobile phones but the world has changed. He says: "Ninety five per cent of people have mobile phones now, and can contact the police from anywhere. Research shows that very few people are visiting front desks and prefer to phone the police or use the internet rather than go to a police station.

"The current service doesn't meet people's preferences and is becoming increasingly expensive as fewer and fewer people use it. We need to deploy staff to call centres where possible to free up resources that keep police officers where people want them: on the street, preventing crime and catching criminals."

It's all very well arguing people prefer to use their mobiles or use the internet but human contact, even in this digital age, is still the most important way to foster understanding between people.

Do the police not want good relations with the public? Do they no longer want us to appreciate the demands and pressures on their officers? Do they no longer wish to talk to us face to face? Of course many visits to a police station are involuntary – people have been ordered to appear there by the courts or by the police themselves.

You might say inconveniencing such people isn't a particularly good argument against the closures.

But the police's own report, prepared by market research company BMG, shows the law-abiding majority account for half of all those visiting police stations.

Oscar Wilde's definition of a cynic was someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

The police don't seem to realise a service is sometimes valuable even if it isn't used very much.

Unless this whole thing is part of a politically-motivated campaign just months before a General Election to whip up opposition to spending cuts, squeeze more money out of the Government and, miraculously, prevent these closures. Or am I being even more cynical?