NORTH Wales' top cop yesterday admitted his force's blunder over speeding tickets was a fiasco. And Richard Brunstrom confessed he was relieved a Crown Court judge spotlighted the paperwork problems. Speed cops last week wrote to 6,500 drivers saying their cases may be re-opened. "I'm glad the judge caught us at it," the chief constable yesterday told the Welsh Affairs Committee, touring Wales to investigate crime and anti-social behaviour. "The judge was absolutely right and the criticism entirely founded, we deserve it. "But it does not mean the people convicted were innocent. It is a fiasco and I very much wish it hadn't happened." Judge Derek Halbert threatened to report the force to the Director of Public Prosecutions if it persisted in computer scanning officers' signatures onto statements in speeding cases. The officers were supposed to have personally read and signed the state-ments. Those convicted of speeding after pleading not guilty, or in their absence, could have cases heard again. Mr Brunstrom added: "Due to a clerical misunderstanding, 6,500 people have been convicted of speeding where the due legal process has not been followed to the nth degree, and it should have been. "We say none of the evidence in those cases is wrong and we will not give up on them or be handing the money back. "We will be pursuing these cases. Each one of these people in our view has broken the law, " said Mr Brunstrom, speaking to the parliamentary committee at Ruthin. Its chairman, Clwyd South West MP Martyn Jones, challenged the chief constable about the adverse effect the Arrive Alive speed campaign was having on police public relations. "You have been making great strides working with the public on things like community beat managers, but it worries me serious damage is being done. The fixed speed cameras are in the right positions but the mobile cameras I do not think are in the right places," he said. And Mr Jones also refused to accept the chief constable's statistics proving the anti-speed campaign was reducing the number of deaths and serious accidents. The MP said statistics from month to month were meaningless - in 1994 North Wales had 49 road deaths, last year it had 48. Mr Brunstrom said he had to work with figures and guidelines from the Department of Transport. Drink-driving figures were going up again and he agreed with Mr Jones a sustained anti-speeding advertising campaign was needed. * 100 police officers in North Wales will be back on the beat by next Christmas. More than two-thirds of North Wales' 1,200 constables are in uniform, putting the region in the top three UK forces when it comes to front line policing, Mr Brunstrom said. The force promised 150 community beat managers and had actually delivered 165. Now the force wants a community beat manager in each of the 281 council wards of North Wales. He hopes to transfer another 100 officers to community beat policing within a yea. | 
