Current Issues - 2004

May 2004

IMC’S gloomy report - PoliceBeat Editorial

The Independent Monitoring Commission Report made for gloomy reading. Only the most optimistic observer could have expected to learn that the paramilitaries had become inactive or, better still, disarmed and disbanded.

The public had it spelt out literally in black and white what the police service already knew and too many politicians chose to ignore: the paramilitaries are inextricably linked to at least two of the opposing political parties and that their grip on their respective communities reflects criminal intent.

Sinn Fein will probably find the Government’s financial penalties (there being no other punishment available) from amongst the small change in their pockets but the sanction on them and on the Progressive Unionist Party is important as an indicator that the Irish and British Governments are acknowledging the impact of the IMC Report. They could hardly do otherwise given the credentials of its authors.

The political fall out from the Report is not the concern of the Federation but the policing ramifications are. The Chief Constable will shortly begin his review of the role of the Full-time Reserve and of the necessity for their retention. How anyone can possibly contemplate the compulsory removal of 1600 experienced police officers in the present unsatisfactory political, policing and security climate has always been a mystery to everyone except the SDLP. Their leadership insists that Patten said the Reserve should go, so ergo apparently they must.

However, the SDLP representatives on the ground, in common with the other political parties, weekly call upon the Chief Constable to provide more police officers for community policing.

The IMC Report also makes it clear that the paramilitaries are perfectly capable of resuming full scale violence. Even at the moment they continue to operate immense criminality and require constant active police attention.

The response to the IMC Report has to be more than political: there must be the commitment to maintain police resources at their maximum. As it is, within a few years the Full-time Reserve will have all but disappeared through natural wastage. The IMC Report suggests that it may take every one of those years for the paramilitary threat to peter out to insignificance.

Dispensing with the Full-time Reserve prematurely will leave this community even more vulnerable to the paramilitaries than it already is. Further loss of confidence that the police have all the resources supported by a determined government to deal with the paramilitaries will not help anyone’s political optimism.