On Tuesday November 3rd there was a "public" event at the policing board headquarters in the GasWorks area of Belfast which was supposed to be a consultation on the PSNI policing plan for the next 5 years.
Three of our members attended this event in order to call out and expose the charade of community policing, however, it soon became clear that this was far from a public event. Instead it was a closed door meeting involving assistant chief constable Chris Todd, vice chair of the policing board Brendan Mullan, a handful of ‘independent’ policing board members and 4 others which included representatives of Ulster GAA and Victim Support.
As we began questioning the operations, accountability and the legality of the PSNI Chris Todd tried to save face by telling us we could talk about it after the event, needless to say we continued.
Questions were put to Todd about continuing PSNI collaboration with the British army to which he denied, he also denied the British army were still here in the occupied 6 counties. He further denied that British military personnel wear PSNI uniforms and perform stop and search operations against Republicans and their families.
When asked about the use of children as informers this was predictably denied outright, however, when Todd was told the PSNI’s official policy around using child informers, or in their terms ‘human covert intelligence sources’, so long as an appropriate adult is present, he turned bright red and began stuttering in his feeble attempts to deny knowledge of the PSNI’s own policies.
Staying on the topic of children as keeping them safe is one of the main themes of this policing plan, we asked what Todds thoughts were in relation to children being strip searched by the PSNI, he initially denied this happened but reneged when we gave statistics of a report from the childrens commissioner. When trying to make excuses Todd was ushered on by policing board vice chair Brendan Mullan who kept shouting over the top of questions that this wasn’t the time or place. We were then quietly told by one of the independent policing board members that they had to stick to the agenda or risk being “started on by the one’s in charge”.
While the responses and excuses from Chris Todd weren’t in the slightest bit surprising, what did strike us as odd was the fact that not a single political representative on the policing board was present, not even the so-called justice minister Naomi Long, nor was there any other members of the general public. This confirmed to us the meeting was simply a box ticking job, that the PSNI will continue as an unjust British police force with little to no accountability and that the next 5 years are already written without public input or interests.
The policing board is designed for one thing only, to publicly wave a finger at the PSNI, nothing else. The board would be better sticking a middle finger up to the public then atleast they’d be making an honest gesture.
The PSNI is and always has been a dysfunctional, discredited and sectarian militia of the British state. Some years ago the Sovereignty Movement made a legitimate challenge under international law to policing in occupied Ireland. In our document ‘The Necessity Of Policing’ we outline the fallacy of policing in the occupied 6 while at the same time not outright rejecting the idea of policing. We instead recognise it as a social necessity and offer a pragmatic, coherent and legitimate strategy on how to challenge the issue.
Over the coming weeks and months we will be meeting with different groups, organisations and the general public to discuss how best to move forward and progress the challenge to British policing here. Anyone interested can contact the page, our emails and phone numbers or ask any of our members for more information.
The following link is to the document 'The Necessity Of Policing'.
