Terror fear grips UK – but police chief sends team to son’s school
POLICE DISGRACE 2
ONE of Britain’s most senior female police chiefs is facing disciplinary action after arranging for dozens of police officers, along with dogs, horses and cars, to entertain pupils at her son’s private school, it can be revealed.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Maxine De Brunner has been placed under formal misconduct investigation after she asked for a massive deployment of officers and specialist units to Chinthurst School in Surrey, at an estimated cost to taxpayers of £10,000 – at a time when the UK was on high terror alert.
She gave staff a long list of the expensive assets she wanted to spend a whole day at the primary school, including a firing range, an armed response vehicle, riot vans, mounted officers and dogs – even though she is responsible for cost-cutting at Scotland Yard.
The controversial event was planned for June, but was cancelled after her bosses were told it was an inappropriate use of scarce resources, especially as the school is outside the Metropolitan Police’s boundaries and her role includes making £500million of budget cuts for the force.
But The Mail on Sunday can reveal an almost identical event at the school, instigated by De Brunner, has previously gone ahead at huge cost to the public.
Now, chiefs have asked Hertfordshire Constabulary to investigate the 50-year-old for misconduct over her plan.
More than 20 officers were sent to Chinthurst, in Tadworth, in June 2014, along with marked cars, police dogs, puppies from the training school, horses from the mounted branch, riot squad teams from the Territorial Support Group and even the Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear unit, used
in the event of a terrorist attack. According to the school newsletter, pupils were allowed to ‘wear riot gear, helmets, hold truncheons and try on handcuffs’ during the event.
They even got to stage a mock riot, charging at the policemen and pelting their plastic shields with tennis balls. Others ‘sat in the riot van to experience life behind bars’.
The children were given ‘a tour of the police horse boxes’ while the officers switched on the blue lights and sirens on their cars which ‘made everyone jump’.
The newsletter confirmed that the ‘very special morning’ had been ‘arranged through one of our parents’. Two years before that, DAC De Brunner also fixed it for the Olympic torch to visit the school – fees can be over £12,000 a year – where she is currently chairman of the governors. The torch was ‘proudly held high’ by her son and he was accompanied by DAC De Brunner herself, ‘who had very kindly arranged the whole event for us’, according to the school newsletter.
A Scotland Yard spokesman confirmed last night: ‘An internal report was received relating to the planned deployment of Metropolitan Police units and officers to an event outside of London. As a consequence, the deployment was cancelled. The service has asked Hertfordshire Constabulary to carry out a misconduct investigation.’
A spokesman for the neighbouring force said: ‘Hertfordshire Constabulary can confirm that, at the request of the Metropolitan Police, we are carrying out a misconduct investigation into this matter.’ Last night MP Keith Vaz, chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, called for DAC De Brunner’s actions to be scrutinised, saying: ‘These decisions require a full explanation. At a time of severe cutbacks to the police, care should always be taken about the use of police resources and time. In the current climate, these are precious.’
This is not the first time that DAC De Brunner has found herself caught up in controversy.
In 2002, she was involved in the disastrous prosecution of royal butler Paul Burrell for his alleged theft of the late Princess Diana’s belongings. It emerged during the trial, which later collapsed, that she had failed to search his loft as she was scared of heights. In 2013, she was ridiculed when her police force spent £660 on a ‘Napoleon-style’ ceremonial hat for her to wear.
And just last month, it was claimed at an employment tribunal that she had unfairly tried to punish a chief inspector for what she called the ‘macho culture’ in his Met unit, after seeing him walking to the locker room wearing only a towel.