Police Commissioner

Maybe I'm showing my age here, but the first thing that comes into my mind when I hear the phrase "Police Commissioner" is Commissioner Gordon of Gotham City saying: "Send up the Bat Signal!"

The Bat Signal

Not really the same in Powys, is it?
However, we have an election coming up on 15th November, for a Police Commissioner, and the first candidate for the new post has just put his leaflet through my door.
His name is Christopher Salmon, and he says that "for the very first time you will be able to hold someone to account for policing in Dyfed Powys." He says that the commissioner will be the person to complain to if people are not happy with the way the local police are doing things.
I'm sure that's not right - isn't there something called a Police Authority, being a committee on which members of the public can sit, which is supposed to hold police authorities to account? Or have they been done away with quietly? I have to say, I was never very clear on how members of the committee were appointed, but they did exist.
Christopher Salmon has been chosen by the Welsh Conservatives to be a candidate - which makes me wonder if he would want to be a candidate if the Welsh Conservatives weren't putting him forward. He's local - he grew up on a farm in Radnorshire - and he's studied history and economics at Oxford, followed by Russian and Security Studies for an MA, and he's been an officer in the Army. He says he's not a career politician (oh, good!). I don't think that it's a good idea to have any political involvement in policing at all - the police should be, ideally, non-political, and there for everyone in order to uphold the law impartially. (I say this from a background where my stepfather was a police officer, and I worked for the Metropolitan Police myself for four years).
It will be interesting to see if the other major parties put candidates forward, or if anyone independent wants to stand for election.