TRAFFIC policeman Bernie Brooker is retiring, after many years working with families touched by heart-rending tragedy.

Even so, PC Brooker won’t be walking away from the people he has supported in his years as a family liaison officer for the Rayleigh Road Policing Unit.

The job involved supporting families of those involved in fatal road crashes and providing information following the death or serious injury of loved ones on the area’s roads.

Most recently, he has worked with relatives of Abbie Bunch, who was left paralysed following a head-on crash in Manners Way, Southend, in October last year. Keely Hartnett, 21, who was eight months pregnant at the time, was killed in the same accident.

In the wake of the terrible crash, PC Brooker has remained in touch with Abbie’s family and kept them informed of the progress of the prosecution of the man responsible for the accident.

Paul Cross, of London Road, Westcliff, pleaded guilty to causing death by dangerous driving and is due to be sentenced next month.

PC Brooker, 54, says it’s impossible not to develop close bonds with such families. He explains: “You’re going through some really troubling times with these people and you relate to them after a while.

“I’ve formed a very good relationship with Abbie and her mum , Paula. I’d like to think that relationship will continue.”

Although he is retiring, PC Brooker has agreed to stay with the case until Cross is sentenced.

He was the investigating officer following the death of firefighter Stephen Capp, in a motorcycle accident on Bread and Cheese Hill, Benfleet, in March, and has decided to see that case through, too.

“I’m doing it voluntarily,” he says. “I feel I’m duty-bound to stay to the end.

“You can’t shut yourself away from it. I wouldn’t feel right walking away from it.”

Bernie Brooker joined Essex Police in 1978, following a family tradition of uniformed service, which started during the Second World War.

Training, at Eynsham Hall, in Oxfordshire, was much tougher than it is for today’s recruits, he says.

“It was quite a strict place,” he recalls. “If you went there you knew about it. One week I wasn’t allowed home because I was caught with my hands in my pockets.”

After training, his first posting was Southend police station, where he served until 1991, when Rayleigh Road Policing Unit beckoned. After qualifying as a VIP security escort driver in 1993, he was the man chosen to escort former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to Southend.

He recalls: “I was trying to keep as close to her Jaguar as I could, but it kept dropping back and cars were getting in between the convoy. They were going mad.

“We finally get to the Cliffs Pavilion, I asked her driver what on earth was going on. He said ‘have you ever stopped a six-ton Jag when you’re right behind someone? I’d have gone right into the back of you!’”

This was far from his most hair-raising experience. In the Eighties, he’d been drafted to Nottingham, to help police picket lines during the miners’ strike.

On the plus side, it meant plenty of overtime for the Essex officers. The downside was spending days away from their families, living in unsanitary old Nissen huts. At one point, the pickets were so angry they tried to push police back into an unlit country lane, where lorries were tearing past at 60mph.

“To them the police were the enemy,” he says. “They were trying and hurt us, no doubt about it.”

For all that, Bernie Brooker maintains the toughest challenge has been the horrific road crashes and their aftermath.

But he adds, it has also been the area where he has made the greatest difference – particularly when children are involved.

“I was first on the scene when an 11-year-old boy died,” he recalls. “He was still alive when I arrived. He was hit by a car and had serious head injuries.

“His friends went home and got his mum and she got there as soon as she could, just as he slipped away.

“The mother related to me immediately because I was the last person on the scene when he died. Her husband had completely shut off, he wouldn’t discuss it, so I really became her main support.”

Determined to reduce the risk of such tragic accidents, PC Brooker has also spent many hours over the past two years talking to 17-year-olds before they take their driving tests.

He has regularly visited colleges and schools to talk about the risks involved in driving.

He explains: “With all the things I’ve seen and dealt with over the years, it’s changed me as a person.

“It makes you appreciate how precious life is – and how quickly it can be taken away.”