Essex Police motorbikes are to return to the county's roads.

The force's U-turn was backed at yesterday's police authority meeting just six years after they were scrapped as too expensive.

Chief Constable Roger Baker pushed for six bikes totalling £72,000 because he knows the impact they have.

He said: "I have been in charge of a motorcycle policing team and have seen the business benefits they can bring.

"If we put a motorcyle outside a school, it makes a more fundamental difference than an officer in a police car outside a school. Don't ask me to explain."

Mr Baker's precedessor, David Stevens, axed the force's 30 motorbikes in 1999 as part of a £7.1 million package of cuts.

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Published Tuesday, December 6, 2005

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