Bunn's life with the police has now come to an end - and Ten One looked back on some of the key events he has experienced.
Bunn said he was proud of being able to help his colleagues and the residents of Christchurch after the devastating earthquake of February 22, 2011.
While the aftershocks kept rumbling on, he was among the Northland police team who came to the city to work in the red zone during the state of emergency.
“The staff and the people down there were so grateful for us being there.”
When Bunn arrived in Christchurch just after the 2011 quake, at least 75 people had already been confirmed dead and the city was severely damaged with many of the eastern suburbs covered in liquefaction. The death toll rose to 185 lives lost as the destruction became more clear.
Bunn was called in when the national state of emergency was declared on February 23. It remained in place until April 30.
“Society has changed - there used to be a lot more respect for authority," he told Ten One.
"It’s become more about the individual rather than the community. I have no time for that.
“My job has enabled me to do so much like APEC, Christchurch, overseas deployment through to working on homicide scenes. It’s been an eye-opener and there has been more good than bad. I have no regrets about my career.”
Bunn has been on call every second week for years.
As part of a farewell morning tea, Acting District Commander Justin Rogers presented Bunn with a District Commander's Commendation recognising his dedicated service to the Northland District Serious Crash unit over 20 years and his first-class service to victims and families impacted by serious and fatal crashes.
But ironically his career started after he was pulled over for running a stop sign in Hamilton.
Behind the wheel of a company car, the then 21-year-old Bunn flew past the stop sign but was then stopped and given a ticket.
When he was pulled over, the traffic officer talked to him about motorbikes, which Bunn had a keen interest in.
The traffic officer must have known he had a potential recruit on his hands so told Bunn to join the team as he was issuing the ticket.
“I told him I’d think about it,” Bunn says.
“I rode motorbikes back then because of the mid-70s oil crisis and as a young fella that’s all you could afford.”
The ticket, and the idea of being paid to ride motorbikes, led him to Trentham for a 13-week course on May 4, 1981.
He started work with the Ministry of Transport as a motorcycle officer in Whangārei in August 1981.
That was a very busy weekend - he got married to Cynthia on Saturday, they drove to Whangārei on Sunday and he started work on Monday.
Back then the MoT uniform for bike riders consisted of leather boots, black leather jackets and everything else you needed was stashed in a panier on the side of a Honda or Yamaha.
The job included writing tickets, traffic enforcement, helping with heavy vehicles, piloting wide loads and driver testing.
“I enjoyed the job and spent eight-and-a-half years on bikes. I would have stayed longer but they ran out of bikes and then decided it wasn’t cost effective to operate motorcycles in the fleet.”
Along with the routine traffic duties, there were royal tours where officers on bikes led the motorcades.
"We had two royal tours that we were doing point duty for and had to control the intersections while the Queen went past.
"Then you raced through the mid-north to another point to meet them again."
There he attended a number of fatal and serious crashes when the Waipu-Ruakaka straights were known as the 'killing fields'.
In 1992 came the merger between police and the MoT, when mapping scenes was done using a pencil, paper and literally cutting and pasting the scene together.
Bunn did his first fatal crash in 1988 while still with the MoT.
In those days the police still investigated the fatal crashes and the ministry worked on everything up until the crash.
By 2004, a position became available in the relatively new serious crash unit and Bunn was the successful applicant.
By his count, he’s attended “a couple of hundred” fatal crashes and up to 2000 crashes.
"It’s about doing a good file for the staff who are there on the scene. I’m providing technical assistance for them. It’s about doing a good job.
"You’re working for the coroner and the families. It’s the families who have lost their son, daughter, wife, loved one. A lot of the time they want to know what has happened as part of their grief and closure.
"We can do that. Generally we know what has happened, but sometimes in a few rare cases we just don’t know why.”
When asked why he’s done it for so long, Bunn said: “For me it’s about doing a good job and getting the satisfaction from that.”
To balance the trauma of the job, Bunn has been involved with football and refereeing for 33 years.
He has also been a warranted Scout leader for about 40 years.
“I’ve always had options outside of Police. I was playing football for Tikipunga Premiers and I started refereeing. An injury moved me away from playing so kept in the game as a referee.
"Refereeing kept me fit for the game and as well for the job. I was also the Scout leader for various scout groups where I was stationed. I’ve had plenty of interests outside the MoT and Police and mixing with other people.”
He was able to indulge his sporting and professional passions during a nine-month deployment to the Solomon Islands in 2012 as part of RAMSI.
For the first six months he was a shift supervisor on the base security team at the police and military compound.
Earlier that year, during an international women’s football fixture between Papua New Guinea and New Zealand in Whangārei, Bunn happened to meet some of the Solomon Island referees.
He picked up the connection again on deployment and, when not on duty, joined the referees on training nights and helped with a couple of sessions.
This led to running the sidelines in the Honiara football leagues, and he helped organise a match between the national Solomon Islands team and an Australian Army team of troops from New South Wales serving with RAMSI.
He also got involved with local Scout groups, training leaders and establishing a programme to develop youth. That course continues to run and Bunn and his wife Cynthia have returned four times to work with the leaders and youth.
Bunn has had badges made at his own expense and sent over to the Solomon Islands along with other equipment.
In the Solomons, Bunn organised the redistribution of gear from the departing Army units to the Scouts and a local school - and even passed eight camp stretchers to nuns sleeping on the floor at a village church.
