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Richard Brunstrom, the speed-camera loving Chief Constable of North Wales, has stirred up more controversy by suggesting the word ‘police’ should be removed from the force’s cars.
Instead he wants the vehicles to be marked only with the Welsh language equivalent – ‘heddlu’.
“I would like to remove the word Police from the back of the police cars. I think it should be Heddlu,” Brunstrom told a conference on language ‘reconciliation.’
Brunstrom told a conference on language reconciliation that he believes the police in North Wales are viewed as an “English-speaking army of occupation,” and doesn’t want his patrol cars being seen as symbols of oppression.
He dismissed the argument that removing “police” from cars could confuse English visitors. “It’s absolute arrogant nonsense,” he said.
David Jones, Conservative MP for Clywyd West, described the police chief’s attempt to remove the English word from the cars as “deeply disturbing.” He pointed out that the Welsh Language Act gives official language status to both English and Welsh.
Brunstrom – once dubbed the ‘Mad Mullah of the Traffic Taliban’ by the Daily Mail because of his enthusiasm for speed enforcement – is no stranger to controversy.
In 2007 he was forced to apologise after showing graphic images of a decapitated motorcycle crash victim at a press conference without having asked permission from the man’s family, and more recently he broke into his own police headquarters in what he claimed was an attempt to highlight security issues.
Will Powell
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