For crimes of the heart call the love police

Your lover takes you to a party, then acts as if you do not exist? Send him a ticket for `intentional ignoring” by e-mail. Your girlfriend spends too much time on the phone with her ex-boyfriend? She is guilty of `lighting an old flame.” "We had 8,000 hits in the first couple of weeks with hardly any publicity,” Robert Welton, owner and creator of lovepolice.com, told the Dallas paper.

Using the website is free. Citations come under broad topics, such as communication, dating, personality and bad habits. There are a total of 150 violations, from `failure to call’ to `forgot name’ to `throwing things’ to `channel surfing compulsion.’

"I was looking for a humorous and nonconfrontational way to express annoyance with behaviours without creating an argument,” says Welton, 51, who was a business consultant for 20 years before quitting to work full-time on the website. An offender receiving a citation by e-mail can make a plea and post bail. Suggestions for bail include such apologetic acts as sending flowers or candy, buying concert tickets, or getting into therapy. All bail suggestions are linked to other business web sites that sell related products.

Welton was quoted as saying he thought of creating the love police ten years ago when he was involved in what he calls a "relationship from hell.” "She committed every relationship violation you can think of,” he says. "I thought to myself, "this woman needs to be arrested by the love police" — but there weren’t any around.” Now they are — at lovepolice.com.