County gets new police chief (From Herald Series)

County gets new police chief

2:12pm Monday 4th August 2008

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Thames Valley Police today announced that Chief Supt Brendan O'Dowda has been promoted to become area commander for Oxfordshire.

The 42-year-old married father of four has spent the past 18 months as the police commander in Oxford.

He replaces former Chief Supt Shaun Morley, who retired last week.

Mr O'Dowda said: "The Oxfordshire command unit is the largest in the country, in terms of the number of officers per population, with about 630,000 people living in the county.

"I'm looking forward to embedding neighbourhood policing, including our responsiveness to community needs and tackling and reducing antisocial behaviour and other issues that blight our neighbourhoods.

"My aim is to increase the community's confidence and participation in what we do and match our response to demand, particularly around areas of risk such as domestic abuse and child abuse, as well as serious and cross-border crime.

"The command unit prides itself on high performance around how we manage our most prolific and priority offenders.

"Together with my partners, I'm looking to build upon integrated offender management in order to both reduce and detect crime, making Oxfordshire a very safe place to live, work and visit."

Mr O'Dowda joined Thames Valley Police as a cadet in 1982.

He has worked at nearly every police station in Oxfordshire since joining the force and has been an inspector on the force surveillance team, a Superintendent in Milton Keynes and was responsible for performance review at the Force headquarters in Kidlington.

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