NORTH Wales' top cop is given too easy a ride by a watchdog over his controversial speed campaign, it was claimed last night. An ex-senior officer plus a former traffic cop say the Police Authority takes the side of chief constable Richard Brunstrom against public opinion. But the watchdog's chairman Malcolm King last night strongly denied it was "in the chief constable's pocket". The Wrexham councillor said: "It's bizarre logic to suggest that if we agree with anything the chief constable is doing, we aren't doing our job. "The vast majority of people I talk to support the Arrive Alive initiative" The Arrive Alive speed campaign criticism came in a BBC Radio 4 documentary Who Runs the Police? broadcast last night. Phil Edwards of Colwyn Bay, a cop for 30 years, said: "I haven't yet spoken to one single person who supports the campaign. "The public seem to be on one side of the argument. The Police Authority and the chief constable are on the other side," added Mr Edwards, who was also Police Federation secretary. "That's not good for democracy, it's not good for policing, it's not good for the public." Elfed Roberts, who retired as the force's assistant chief constable in 2000, told the programme police and authority members are too close. "At the risk of being unkind about it, it was a standing joke at one time among the police officers who attended Police Authority meetings that if certain individuals left the room temporarily, the general IQ level in the room rose "If anyone outside questions or begins to criticise the chief officer or the force, what you very quickly find is that the Police Authority rally round." Mr Brunstrom told the programme: "It's very difficult for a police authority of course, which is a bunch of amateurs in a sense, ordinary local people, without being at all condescending, to hold a professional organisation to account. "I've got 25 years experience in the police. I feel very comfortable with my knowledge of my role and the law. "It's very easy, you could say, for me to run rings round a bunch of amateurs. "But in practice it's not like that because I have to stand up in public with the press listening and justify what I'm doing with public money and the results that we're producing." | 
