Getting the point across

Wednesday 20th August 2008, 3:00PM BST.

IN the last couple of months we have heard that police officers may soon have the ability to walk into schools and search children for blades.

This new power was among the proposed changes to the law announced in an attempt to ward off knife crime among young people.

So it is rather lovely to find an image from a far more innocent time – just 25 years ago.

Anne Cornic had sent in a clipping from this newspaper in March 1983. The picture featured her son Sam – then Pc Cornic – drilling pupils at St Martin’s School in the essentials of the Green Cross Code.

In the 1980s police officers were regular visitors to primary schools to instruct children, not only in road safety but also bearing warnings not to talk to strangers.

In this picture Pc Cornic, now retired, was lining the children up along their practice kerb.