PSNI’s Blue Lights generation being let down by unreformed mindsets at the top of policing - Chris Donnelly

A friend of mine, a lifelong republican, made the trip halfway across the world to Australia a few years ago to see his child graduate as a police officer and begin a career in a profession many Irish people have historically been associated with in ‘the new world’, not least in the big cities of America’s east coast. For his son, taking up the career back home never merited consideration.

There continues to be a genuine yearning across this society for an effective and representative policing service. At ground level, many PSNI officers work to make a difference, remaining faithful to the responsibilities and duties characterising community policing.

I have witnessed PSNI officers working to ensure the Falls Park in the heart of west Belfast remains a place families and people of all ages can relax and enjoy throughout the year, proactively discouraging anti-social behaviour by merely being present at the right time.

Every year since the beginning of Covid, I have contacted local PSNI officers in my capacity as a school principal to ask them to help control traffic flow temporarily to facilitate P7 children being driven by their parents in convoy past the gates of the school to be waved goodbye by staff and pupils following their Leavers’ Mass.

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It’s the type of small gesture a community-based police service willingly embraces, recognising the joy it brings to others.

There is no vision of a united Ireland at this point that does not incorporate the retention of the PSNI as an organisation enduring and playing a key role in the transition from our current constitutional arrangements into a new island-wide framework, though modest changes will likely be considered in the aftermath as part of a harmonisation of policing across the island.

Yet the conduct of many within the PSNI continues to suggest there remains a determined and hard core element working to prevent the realisation of a truly non-partisan policing service worthy of the name.

The recent revelation that the PSNI had been keeping at least eight journalists under surveillance is an alarming development that should be receiving significantly greater political and media attention given the gravity of the allegation and its implications.

The motivation for the spying operation would appear to be to identify police officers who may have been in contact with journalists to provide information about police misconduct, including collusion in high profile Troubles killings.

The very fact the PSNI appeared to be more interested in spying on journalists endeavouring to uncover hidden truths for the relatives of deceased victims than actually investigating and arresting those responsible for this sectarian slaughter is one of the reasons why so many people remain to be convinced that the PSNI truly do represent a new beginning to policing.

It sounds like a story from the pages of a Cold War thriller set in an eastern European city, not from Belfast two decades and more after the Royal Ulster Constabulary and its ways were supposed to be consigned to the past.

The information only emerged as a result of a case being taken by Barry McCaffrey and Trevor Birney, the two journalists who were treated appallingly by the PSNI after having investigated the loyalist massacre of innocent civilians in Loughinisland in 1994.

The very fact the PSNI appeared to be more interested in spying on journalists endeavouring to uncover hidden truths for the relatives of deceased victims than actually investigating and arresting those responsible for this sectarian slaughter is one of the reasons why so many people remain to be convinced that the PSNI truly do represent a new beginning to policing.

As Brian Feeney correctly pointed out in the pages of this paper last week, the PSNI have not yet been able to get across the line and fully win over the hearts and minds of nationalists.

Contrary to the lazy narrative, this is not a consequence of a political leadership failing to get on board and sell policing. Sinn Féin’s first minister, Michelle O’Neill, now accepts a PSNI bodyguard team and the party has even taken to attending PSNI passing out ceremonies for new graduates.

Neither of these gestures by the most senior republican in the north will convince people that all has changed utterly within policing when the PSNI continues to be active in working to prevent victims’ families from piecing together information about the murder of their loved ones and targeting journalists who undertake investigative roles into killings often implicating the RUC and British Forces.

The Blue Lights generation of rank and file PSNI officers may represent the promising potential of post-Troubles policing, but the change in mindset required is at the top.

People are entitled to expect better from the PSNI and from a Policing Board which has so far failed to properly hold the leadership of the PSNI to account on this and many other matters.