A loud rap on the door at six in the morning changed the world of Chief Constable Sean Price forever. Chris Webber talked to him about how being arrested led first to depression and then a deep desire to fight back

AS he lay in bed early last August, Sean Price, Chief Constable of Cleveland Police, may have considered that his professional troubles were par for the course.

He and his deputy, Derek Bonnard, had dealt with a fair number of mini-crises at the force.

A £7.3m black hole in the police budget had been filled, the numbers of police officers going off on the sick had been reduced, crime figures, once sky high, had been going down for years.

Then came a sharp knock on the door and, as he fumbled for his dressing gown, his home filled with about a dozen police officers. Suddenly the realisation dawned that he was in a whole world of trouble which was like nothing that had gone before.

At the same moment – 6am, August 3, 2011 – Mr Bonnard, in another North Yorkshire village not so far away, was also waking to a knock at the door. Looking out the window he saw what he immediately recognised as a police raid. He heard his wife crying as she opened the door. Officers burst in.

Both men say they knew what the raid was about. Operation Sacristy, the investigation into various allegations of corruption at the upper reaches of Cleveland Police and Cleveland Police Authority, had been rumbling on for months. Both insist they were co-operating, but Mr Price was cautious about handing over documents. Worried about breaching the Data Protection Act and the legalities of possibly handing over information to people who could eventually be investigated themselves, he had kept them back and sought legal advice. Not handing over those documents, according to Mr Price’s solicitors, had caused Warwickshire Police to apply for a search warrant and the arrests, which both Price and Bonnard argue were unnecessary and unlawful.

Allowed to shower and dress, Mr Price found himself in a police car on an eight-mile trip to Northallerton. The chief constable of a highprofile police force was being taken in for questioning by the kind of policemen he had served with his entire adult life. He recalls feeling “shocked, disorientated”.

He says: “I remember sitting in that car and thinking, ‘Right or wrong, my life has changed forever. I’m completely innocent, but this will tail me forever’. The journey was eight miles, then I had 30 hours of detention and four interviews – it was unprecedented.”

Mr Bonnard talks in even starker terms about the experience: “It was horrific, my wife was distressed, hearing her upset like that will stay with me forever.”

Both men say they complied fully and answered all the questions put to them. And they both say that those terrible two days were only the beginning of a longer nightmare.

“I’m well known,” explains Mr Price. “Just a trip to the shops is a staring competition. It’s horrible. Horrible for me, horrible for my family, horrible for people who know me; but don’t get me wrong, I’ve had a lot of support as well.”

Later, in a one-to-one interview with The Northern Echo, he goes into more detail, describing a common experience every time he leaves the house. “People look at me suspiciously and my friends, my family, are under stress too, because of what’s happening to me.”

Confirming a leaked medical report, a leak which he says has deeply added to his anguish, Mr Price confirms he has suffered from stress and depression. “Yes, I did seek treatment,” he says. “It was hard to do that, it was two months of hard work, working through that with help.”

IF anything, Mr Bonnard, who was born in Lingdale and raised in Guisborough, found the experience even harder because his parents and family still live in Cleveland. Unsurprisingly, he has also suffered from stress.

“It’s the stares and the pointing,” he says.

“I’ve had public abuse. Lads shouting at me, ‘You’re supposed to be in jail’. You have to remember those people don’t know the full facts.

It impacts on the people you love, but my wife and my family have been immense.”

Separately, while sitting in the pleasant surroundings of a hotel garden in Northallerton, they both issue clear, hard statements of their determination to clear their names. And not only that, they both want to return to work.

Speak to one and you’re hearing the other.

Mr Price: “I’ve done nothing wrong and it’s the job I love. Of course, I want to serve again with one of the best police forces in the whole country.”

Mr Bonnard says he had been supported by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary as a potential chief constable just months before the arrest. He said: “There’s something about being a police officer in the area were you grew up – among your own people – that is special.

I won’t be happy until I’m back doing that job.

I worry about becoming de-skilled, losing touch, but there’s nothing I want to do more than get back to work. I want my life back.”

In the meantime, Warwickshire Police, leading the investigation, usually working with North Yorkshire Police officers, has also issued a clear, simple message. It’s a message as strong as that of Mr Price and Mr Bonnard’s claims of innocence, but without any emotion whatsover: “Criminal and misconduct investigations are ongoing.”