Crime detection falls in Ulster amid rise in bombings and shootings

The number of bombings in Northern Ireland has increased fivefold since the year after the Good Friday Agreement , a report showed yesterday.

In the same period the number of shootings has nearly trebled, mainly because of sectarian violence, according to the first annual report of the Northern Ireland Policing Board, set up to hold the force to account.

The board said there had been an alarming fall in crime detection levels in the past 12 months. Senior police officers have blamed this on the departure of experienced officers after reforms to the Royal Ulster Constabulary. Despite the setting of a 31 per cent detection rate target, only 20.1 per cent was achieved last year.

During 2001-02 there were 318 bombings, compared with 66 in 1999-2000. The number of shootings rose from 131 to 358 in the same period. Thousands of petrol bombings, incendiaries or hoax alerts were not included in the report. Irwin Montgomery, the chairman of the Police Federation of North Ireland, representing rank and file officers, blamed sectarian rioting and the terrorist threat. He said: "The amount of time which has been absorbed in combating street disorder and heightened security obviously reduces resources available to deal with ordinary crime. The community has to ask itself where its priorities lie." Mr Montgomery said detectives retiring under the Patten blueprint for reforming the Royal Ulster Constabulary had also had a huge impact.

Although dissident republican and loyalist paramilitary organisations were responsible for the majority of attacks, the statistics were bound to increase the pressure on the republicans to meet Ulster Unionist demands for the IRA to disband. The party leader, David Trimble, has vowed to quit Stormont if Sinn Fein does not prove its commitment to purely democratic means.

The policing board chairman, Professor Desmond Rea, accepted the force had had a difficult year. "Detection rates were low, there were fewer arrests for drug offences and more officers were absent due to sickness," he said.

"The reality is that the police need to do better but they will only be able to do that with real input from the communities they serve."