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Belfast Telegraph - United Kin
28 December 2007

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Police Service of Northern Ire

Northern Ireland: Police need

Mr Justice Weir did us all a service when he laid into the police over their investigation of the Omagh bombing.

He made it abundantly clear that the police had bungled the case, particularly the collection and handling of DNA evidence, and that some officers had tried to deceive the court over their role.

The NI Forensic Service also felt the lash of the judge's tongue and the Public Prosecution Service must have red faces at allowing the case ever to go before the courts. The bombing which killed 29 people in 1998 involved up to 18 terrorists in making the bomb and arranging the logistics to bring it to Omagh and leave it in a busy market street. Not one of that large band of terrorists has been successfully prosecuted for the outrage.

That is a terrible failing on the part of the police, the intelligence services and the Gardai in the Republic, because there was a strong cross-border element in the bombing.

The bereaved and survivors of Omagh were promised the earth in the immediate aftermath of the bombing and have seen those promises turn to dust. They, of course, are not alone. Thousands of cases of murder remain unsolved to this day, even though the security forces knew who exactly carried them out. In a significant number of instances, the killers were paid agents of the police or military.

However, in case anyone thinks to the contrary, this is not a simple rant against the ineffectiveness of the former RUC. Many, many officers did their best against tremendous odds in the fight against terrorism. Many gave their lives. They deserve our undying admiration for their work.

But, as a corporate body, the police was much less professional than its leaders and supporters tried to pretend. On countless occasions, reinvestigations of crimes have shown great deficiencies in the original probes, allowing the guilty to escape.

In some cases this was deliberate, but in many it was sheer ineptitude. Mr Justice Weir has shown yet another example. He is not a man who can be said to have an axe to grind against the police. He is not an unthinking critic of their methods. Yet in this instance he was almost incandescent with rage at what he discovered when he examined the evidence.

Those who would support the police or other security services with blinkered devotion should examine Mr Justice Weir's criticisms. There is a tendency among some sections of this community to give the police, in particular, totally uncritical approval in all its actions.

I recall speaking to a woman, whose family on both her and her husband's side, were steeped in service with the RUC. Until an incident which led her to believe that a relative had suffered a gross miscarriage of justice, she would have listened to no criticism of the force.

Then, in her fight to discover the truth, she found unionist politicians very reluctant to be associated with her. She believed that they could not countenance the police doing anything wrong deliberately. Even if such a case could be proven, those politicians would prefer the truth to remain untold. The police were a part of the fabric of society which should remain above suspicion.

Such an attitude does neither the police nor the wider community any good. To bury one's head in the sand and pretend that the security forces always operated to the highest standards of integrity and professionalism was to overlook the many occasions when that was not true. It also meant that inefficiencies could be brushed under the carpet and that the guilty could continue to escape justice. There was no real compulsion on the force to improve its investigative abilities, never mind set aside its murkier activities.

Now, through the reports of former Police Ombudsman Nuala O'Loan and the comments of Mr Justice Weir, no one can afford that luxury any more.

The modern PSNI will be judged, as all police forces should be, on its ability to catch crooks and on the integrity of its behaviour.

That may come too late for the bereaved and survivors of Omagh, but it will benefit others in the years to come if the force proves itself.

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Article sourced from

Belfast Telegraph - United Kin28 December 2007

Northern Ireland: Police need

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Belfast Telegraph - United Kin
28 December 2007