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MADCAP 'CHIEF CONSTABLE' SAYS ECSTASY DRUG IS SAFER THAN ASPIRIN - TIME FOR HIM TO BE SACKED!


Richard Brunstrom, Chief Constable of North Wales 'Police', aka Spider the Druid..Siobhan Delaney died after taking an Ecstasy tablet

No sane person could ever accuse Richard Brunstrom of fearing controversy. But his most recent suggestion that ecstasy is safer than aspirin must make even his most ardent supporters question his judgment - if not his sanity. And even by the bizarre 'standards' of North Wales's chief constable it was an outrageous suggestion, prompting one local observer to say: "Brunstrom's as mad as a shithouse rat."

Yet nothing deters the ambitious officer, who took over in January 2001 and once proposed putting a vending machine for needles for heroin addicts outside Colwyn Bay police station, to be kept stocked with disposable syringes by ambulance crews.

Brunstrom clearly blossoms on the oxygen of publicity, no matter how much trouble it might get him into. This, remember, is the man for ever known as "the Mad Mullah of the Traffic Taliban" for his relentless advocacy of using more and more speed cameras against speeding drivers. In 2003 he suggested, with typical restraint, that this country needed three times as many cameras and argued that the defence that some drivers can "drift" over the speed limit cannot be accepted.

Later Brunstrom even called a press conference to condemn a retired 71-year-old bank manager who was caught doing 39mph in a 30mph zone and criticised his "zero-tolerance" policy on speeding. His passion for cracking down on motorists saw his officers issue 4,200 speeding tickets but - in stark contrast - clear up only 41 out of 693 vehicle crimes in a single month. In the same period it was revealed that his force had solved a mere six per cent of burglaries in their area. A clear misappropriation of valuable police resources paid for by the public Brunstrom does not care if he offends or not.


Courtesy of IA Division of Narcotics Enforcement ......Deadly Ecstasy tablets

Indeed the former Home Office minister David Mellor once accused him of making "blood-curdling threats to speeding motorists, while wanting heroin legalised on 'logic' that would not persuade a six year old". A former head of road policing for the Association of Chief Police Officers, Brunstrom stood down in 2005 after persistent criticism from other chief constables. But his passion for road safety saw him take the decision to display photographs of a headless motorcyclist at a traffic accident to a public conference without asking the family's permission.

The photograph showed father-of-three Mark Gibney's head still in a red and white helmet with his eyes open while his torso was embedded in the car which had been involved. The publication meant that Mr Gibney's widow and children knew the full details of his injuries, which had, until that time, been kept from them. For this gross abuse of duty of care he should have been sacked but the "unfit for purpose" Home Office did nothing.

Brunstrom was not censured for his decision to use the photographs although the family called for his resignation, as did Martyn Jones, Labour MP for Clwyd South. It was one more example of his clear contempt for common sense or reasonable behaviour. Time after time, he takes an ever increasing delight in drawing attention to himself - no matter how extraordinary his views or his actions may be and the Home Office takes no action against him.

In December 2007, for example, he broke into his own police headquarters at Old Colwyn to point out a lapse of security. The steely-haired Londoner, who gained a PhD in zoology from the University of Wales in Bangor, spent 11 years with the Sussex Constabulary before transferring to Greater Manchester and then Cleveland on his way to North Wales. He has never minded making a complete fool of himself. But to suggest that Ecstasy is safer than aspirin must surely lead to his sacking on the grounds that he is "unfit for purpose".

In August 2006, he took some pleasure in his appointment as an honorary Druid (a great relief for the Masons) with the name Prifgopyn (which means spider). There is a headstrong, even devil-may-care attitude about the Welsh-speaking Brunstrom, who as a young officer in Brighton agreed, as a dare, to direct traffic in the town wearing his uniform and a gorilla mask and yet this 'police officer' still made it to the rank of chief constable!?

Brunstrom, who is married with two children in their early twenties, subsequently asked his force to launch not one but two investigations into political correctness against the advice of the Crown Prosecution Service. One was against the then Prime Minister Tony Blair for, reportedly, addressing the remark "fucking Welsh" to a television set during the 1999 Welsh Assembly elections, and the other against the Weakest Link presenter Anne Robinson for anti-Welsh comments.

Neither case came to court, although they cost the North Wales taxpayer almost £6,000. But that didn't apparently matter to Brunstrom - not so long as his name was in the spotlight. This, then, is the very model of a modern chief constable - a man whose appetite for publicity is matched only by his very clear lack of judgment and rationality. What a depressing spectacle for the ratepayers of North Wales who have to put up with this menace to law and order!

Write to the Home Secretary to demand that Brunsrom is sacked....

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