Ray Mallon, once nicknamed Robocop, made the comments at a public meeting alongside the Chief Constable of Nottinghamshire Police, Steve Green.

Mr Mallon said cracking down on minor offences deters a culture of more serious crime.

Mr Green said his force had a good record on tackling drug offences.

Doing nothing is not an option Ray Mallon

The meeting was held at Pasture Road Community Church Hall in Stapleford on Tuesday night.

Mr Mallon said people often misunderstood what was meant by "zero tolerance" policing.

"It is not all about hard line policing, it's all about doing something about every problem on the street," he said.

"Where I work in Middlesbrough our police, nine times out of 10, when they see someone misbehaving, no matter what it is, they will intervene.

"That does not mean they will arrest more people or report more people for summons, in other words doing nothing is not an option."

Mr Green felt the main problem for him was a lack of money.

He said: "I think resources are a challenge and I've had to work on the focus, I couldn't do everything at once.

"So what we have focussed on so far is drugs and we have had a lot of success with that, with Rat on a Rat and so on.

"Now we are focussing on anti-social behaviour and I think we can get results there."