Press Releases - 2003

28 January 2003

Police Federation for Northern Ireland comment on SDLP paper on Policing

The Police Federation for Northern Ireland has rejected the call by the SDLP for an unarmed police service describing it as 'fantasy policing'.

The Federation debated this issue as a motion at its annual conference in 1993 and overwhelmingly concluded that even without the threat of terrorism modern policing was no longer sustainable other than as an armed civilian police service.

Today the threat of terrorism remains real and gun crime is habitual among the paramilitaries and the plainly criminal. Knife attacks on officers in Britain are numerous but are comparatively rare in Northern Ireland because officers are routinely armed. We see no prospect whereby officers would elect to patrol unarmed or if in public order situations to have neither the protection of PBRs, which is also mooted, nor firearms.

It is frustrating that the SDLP seems unable to take up the Federation invitation to talk to rank and file police officers so that their views on policing might be better and more realistically informed.