Current Issues - 2003
January 2003Fighting for the Reserve
This month the Federation has been compelled to enter into negotiations with the Northern Ireland Office to agree a compulsory severance package for officers - in this case the Full-time Reserve.
The future of the Full-time Reserve is just one important consideration in any overall objective assessment of police resources. In the past few days the NIO has announced first moves in the recruitment of 1500 part-time officers as community police officers, strangely enough without reference to the 50:50 rule which seems so crucial when it suits.
The SDLP has also declared its intention to call for the closure of some 20 Northern Ireland police stations as part of the demilitarisation process. They make arguments for closing police stations claiming it leads to better deployment of police resources but demilitarisation has nothing to do with any assessment of police need. If anything, political parties usually fight tooth and nail to hang on to their police stations because the community want local police visibility.
The Federation finds the approach of the NIO and some policing board members for that matter to police resources simply bewildering. On the one hand there is an unreasonable determination to phase out the Full-time Reserve as per Patten and on the other hand, despite the fancy arithmetic, there is evidence that the 50:50 recruitment rule is denying the police service the officers in the numbers the community so urgently needs. As for the part-timers, it is significant that their recruitment can only go ahead in certain areas where the personal risk is deemed acceptable. The prospect of being routinely unarmed as suggested by the SDLP can hardly be reassuring either.
In view of these factors, it is entirely logical that the Federation's starting point for negotiation of compulsory severance is to deny that there is a case for triggering their termination in 2005 when the Chief Constable will have advised the Secretary of State of his presumably benign assessment of the security situation.
A more courageous Government would stand up to the political pressure and recognise the value and contribution of the remaining 1850 full-time reservists and subsume them within the existing service. The irony is summed up in the fact that no part-time officers will be recruited in West Belfast for some time, yet the Government seems anxious to pay off the full-time reservists who are over 40 per cent of operational strength there. By the way it was also a full-time reserve officer based in Castlereagh who won the neighbourhood officer of the year award. Need we say more?
