The police have issued a further request for help from the public in identifying and apprehending the murderer of Yusufu Miiro. Nothing in itself that's news about that, you would think? This is, after all, a high profile case, one which the Prime Minister himself has the idea that he has to be very concerned about. Such an appeal of course, has not come about because the Home Secretary is breathing down anyone's neck. Sir Ian Blair and his team are not feeling under the cosh about what is left of their careers.

Surely this is just an example of the police being intelligently led and asking the public for further help. They are, after all, striving as hard as they can to protect the public and they know they can't do this without the public's co-operation and help. It also gives people confidence to know that the police are trying their best.

Actually, there is something special going on, if past local form is anything to go by. The police in Waltham Forest regularly fail to ask the public for help in identifying suspects. Only three weeks ago, there was an attempted armed robbery at Blackhorse Road underground station. No appeal for help from witnesses followed and the criminals are still at large.

The police did issue a request for help on 23 June when a man was robbed outside the Natwest Bank in the Town Square in broad daylight. (The cynics gently pickling themselves on the nearby benches can be heard to mutter that this is because the robbery took place at a spot the police were trying to include in a council ban on public consumption of alcohol).

The police did not, however, announce that anything even at all untoward had happened, when two people were shot on 7 June. No public appeal for help in identifying the culprits has been reported. In fact, news of the 'incident' - move along now - nothing to see here - only made it into the local paper eleven days later. Two days later we were told for the first time that police were appealing for witnesses to robberies at a Grove road bookmakers which had been the victim of armed robberies twice in three weeks.

It seems that there is a pattern of the local police being somewhat selective in the crimes they tell the public about and the occasions on which they choose to appeal for witnesses. I hope whoever is making these choices about telling us what is going on in our neighbourhood and when not to bother, never becomes the victim of serious violence himself.

However, being a policeman, he will no doubt be comforted in the knowledge that were such a dreadful and traumatizing thing to happen, all professional courtesies will be extended. The police response will be rapid and fully resourced, as when a Metropolitan policeman was shot in Leytonstone on 26 June 2006 or an Essex policeman shot in Loughton on 25 June 2008. I'm pleased, of course, that the police's response in such situations is robust and effective. I just wish that we could see them putting in similar efforts to combat the criminals when its not them who are the targets, and when the higher ups in the Met aren't feeling nervous because the Home Secretary's career is going down the tube.