Dorchester police chief Andy Mason is retiring after a career spanning 30 years in the force.

Father-of-two Inspector Mason, 54, who has presided over three sergeants and 24 constables at the Weymouth Avenue station for seven years, is looking forward to having a rest when he retires tomorrow.

But he will miss his team, he said. Paying tribute to the county town's dedicated police officers, the section commander told the Echo: "I am very sorry to be going, I have thoroughly enjoyed my time in Dorchester.

"I will miss the people; they are a fantastic bunch and I really do not know how they do it.

"There is so much pressure on them, but they still come back for more."

Insp Mason said his officers are disappearing under a pile of paperwork as calls on their services have rocketed.

He added that Dorchester will need extra manpower as the town grows by a third over the next decade, but there is no funding available.

Insp Mason added: "I would love to see more bobbies on the beat, but shortages make it almost impossible for us to live up to the public's expectations."

The inspector said Dorchester belies its sleepy image, with the majority of crimes being car theft, thefts from garages and outhouses, drunkenness, minor violence, and domestic assaults.

The only two incidents in the history of Dorset Police for baton rounds being used to shoot at criminals have happened during the past year on his patch, at armed sieges in Charlton Down and Puddletown.

Insp Mason said: "It is impossible to say why that is, they were both domestic incidents and that was the safest way of resolving them.

"Anything can happen at any time and our personal safety is becoming compromised a lot more. But my staff did brilliantly and were the first there to contain the situation, before calling on trained firearm officers to take it forward."

Inspector Mason - whose son Garry is a police officer in Weymouth - joined Dorset Police at Bournemouth in 1974, moving to Dorchester in 1976 as a constable.

He worked in scenes of crime for six years, as sergeant and inspector at Weymouth, as temporary inspector at Bridport, supervised the Dorset Police control room and was section commander at Wareham for three years before his posting at Dorchester.

Narrow escapes include being stabbed in the neck in 1989, and rescuing three-year-old twins from a car doused in petrol in 1992, for which he received the Queen's Commendation for Bravery.

Insp Mason, who has seen his 200-mile-square patch extended to cover Abbotsbury, Portesham and Osmington, lives in Preston, Weymouth, with his wife Sandra. His duties will be taken up by Wareham Inspector Les Fry next week.

DEPARTING police chief Andy Mason has made a last-ditch plea for CCTV cameras to be erected in Dorchester.

Inspector Mason, 54, who retires as the county town's section commander tomorrow, has urged councillors to embrace plans that could see county council traffic management cameras also playing a crucial crime-busting role in Dorchester.

The scheme, which follows a bid to use cameras already installed at Top o' Town and Maumbury Road to help in the deduction and prevention of crime, could see two more dual-purpose cameras put up at the junctions of Church Street and South Street with the High Street.

Insp Mason said the biggest disappointment of his 30-year police career was when Dorchester lost out to Bridport for Home Office funding for CCTV cameras. And now he fears that Dorchester Town Council wrangles over planning issues could mean a second kick in the teeth.

He said: "Bridport was chosen because our bid was not supported wholeheartedly by everyone on the town council, and now Dorchester is targeted by criminals who feel they can get away with it here. My main concern is that if we cannot count on everybody on the town council to support it this time round, the cameras will not be used for that purpose."

Insp Mason, who says he hopes to continue campaigning for CCTV in Dorchester even after he retires, added: "This is not an all-singing, all-dancing solution to our lack of CCTV cameras, but they are a cost-effective way to greatly assist us in reducing town centre crime."

Town councillor Tom Parsley backed Insp Mason's calls, and said: "There is a small group of people that are really keen on the plans and want to see them happen. But we need to be prepared as a whole council to give the police support when they are asking for it."

Dorchester Mayor, Coun Molly Rennie, said: "We have to consider planning regulations; if one camera is sited by the town pump, that is a sensitive conservation area and we can't just bend the rules because we feel like it.

"A camera mounted on a pole at Cornhill would look ugly, it needs to be sensitively designed and put in the right place.

"The town council has supported the CCTV bid in the past and was as disappointed as anyone else when Bridport got the funding.

"But people need to be consulted on this, and we need to strike a balance here - we do not want to frighten people into thinking Dorchester is not safe."

Mrs Rennie said councillors had been looking at police monitoring rooms and County Hall traffic systems to see if the images will be good enough to help the fight against crime.