Here at www.wishaw.co.uk we receive emails from Strathclyde Police on a regular basis with any crimes committed in the area. We are thankful for this service, and would not risk jeopardising this crucial service. Unfortunately a large Scottish tabloid has proved to have no such compunctions.

On Monday we received, as per usual, our press release containing details of crimes committed in the previous week. There was one story about a cross-dressing male committing credit card fraud and scamming a 76 year old woman out of a substantial sum of money.

The scam was committed by a man phoning the lady and claiming to be from her bank. He managed to coerce the lady into disclosing her PIN number and arranged for a courier to collect her card. Unfortunately he then attended at her bank in Cleland and withdrew a substantial sum of money from her bank.

On Tuesday we received an email from the police liaison requesting that we do not divulge certain crucial details of the case, particularly the sum of money withdrawn from the lady's accounts and the fact that the fraudster wore a certain disguise to get his hands on the money. We duly followed this request and did not publish the story at all. Unfortunately it seems that The Scottish Sun had no such reservations and ran the story in full.

This could have an impact on the community media liaison service, even leading to the withdrawal of this most crucial service. The details should have been withdrawn in order to allow the police to carry out full interviews with possible suspects. The police requested that the fact that a disguise was used by the criminal should not be mentioned.

We can only hope that by running the story in full the Scottish Sun will not have done irretrievable harm to this important public service.