Independent Report Emphasises continued failure to support PSNI - Beattie

< Back To News

Independent Report Emphasises continued failure to support PSNI - Beattie

Speaking on the publication of the Policing Board independent review, Ulster Unionist Party Justice spokesperson, Doug Beattie MC MLA, commented.

“The most insightful finding from the review of the Northern Ireland Policing Board is the ‘dominant political culture’ which, as the report lays out, is impeding ‘maturation of collective responsibility, cohesion, common purpose and corpocracy’. This has been something the Ulster Unionist Party has raised on multiple occasions.

 

“The politicising of policing goes well beyond the board as we see individual politicians hold a proverbial gun to the head of the police to ensure they react in a way favourable to their political outlook when an incident occurs.  The threat that if the police don’t act in a particular way, political parties would withdraw from the policing board is an impossible position for any Chief Constable. Yet this is exactly what happened following the Sean Grahams commemoration on the Ormeau Road in 2021.

 

“To depoliticise the board we must rebalance its membership.  If you are a party of the Executive then you should have 1 policing board member, the rest should be made up of lay members.

 

“The tripartite arrangement between the Department of Justice, the Police Service and the Policing Board also came under sustained criticism.  Being described as a ‘two-legged stool’ or a ‘parent-child’ relationship certainly gave the image of a dysfunctional relationship, even before the review confirmed this. 

 

“If there is no one person responsible for the oversight of the tripartite arrangement, then there can be no shared vison or direction. This is the space the Justice Minister has failed to fill since Justice and Policing was devolved. In this, Justice Ministers past and present, must take ownership of their failure to lead and their failure to support an organisation crying out for help over many years.

 

“This review could have delved further into the operation of the policing board and the relationship between it, the Department of Justice and the Police Service. Yet a short time limited review with limited terms of references have left us without any real recommendations for change and no momentum to fix a politicised police oversight body.”