Police chief: I’ll call it a day next Christmas

Aug 14 2008 by Richard Evans, North Wales Weekly News

CHIEF constable Richard Brunstrom plans to retire by the end of next year.

The controversial chief revealed he will bow out when his contract runs out in December 2009 and that he has no plans to spend his autumn years delving in politics.

In a BBC Wales interview the top cop also discussed his personal life and the future of policing in Wales.

Speaking ahead of his retirement the chief constable said: “My wife and I intend to retire, sell up, buy a boat and go sailing, while we are still fit and young enough to do so.

“I don’t want to be the recipient of that old political saw that every political career ends in failure.”

He added: “I have a contract that goes to Christmas next year and I suspect by that time I will simply retire and disappear and you will not find me re-emerging as an aspiring politician or indeed in any other field.”

Mr Brunstrom also said he believed a devolved police force answering to the Assembly, and not central government would soon arrive, a concept which he would fully support.

Mr Brunstrom said a devolved Welsh police force was: “Not just attractive and right, but inevitable, I think we will end up in a situation that Scotland has now – Scotland has an independent police service.

“There is a debate to be had whether we want an all-Wales national police service. We have four autonomous, not quite independent, but autonomous police forces in Wales at the moment.

“There is no particularly obvious reason why four is the right number and there is a particularly interesting debate as to whether on a national police service, which would be common place in a country the size of Wales elsewhere in Europe, is a good idea or a bad one.”

Mr Brunstrom also revealed how as a disillusioned Bangor University PhD student on a miserable wet afternoon, he decided to join the police force – when he came across an officer sleeping in his car at Menai Bridge.

“There was a police car parked in the centre of the roundabout with the engine on and the windscreen wipers going,” he said.

“And as I cycled past in the rain, thinking I wasn’t enjoying my life much, I saw there was a police officer in the car.

“He was lying flat in the driver’s seat with his hat over his eyes, clearly fast asleep because the windscreen wipers were going, and I thought – I could do that job.”

richard.evans