Police embroiled in a familiar dogfight
Instead of the bright new era in policing that was meant to begin about now, the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) found itself embroiled yesterday in an all-too-familiar dogfight with an outside investigator.
The authorities will be deeply dismayed that the force, which was renamed this year as part of sweeping policing changes, implicitly stands accused of incompetence, negligence, obstruction and concealment.
The PSNI has already characterised the report on Omagh by the police ombudsman, Nuala O'Loan, as being strewn with "significant factual inaccuracies, unwarranted assumptions, misunderstandings and material omissions". Supporters of the police have fiercely attacked the ombudsman. The O'Loan report therefore takes its place in the line of reports on the RUC that tend to bring as much grief to the investigators as to the force under investigation.
The classic and best-remembered example of this was the affair in the 1980s when John Stalker, then a senior Manchester police officer, was called in to investigate what were known as shoot-to-kill incidents. Six republicans died in three incidents involving specialist RUC teams.
In that saga Mr Stalker was suspended from his Manchester job. While some came eventually to accept this was unconnected with Northern Ireland, the suspicion remains widespread that hidden hands were at work in the affair. No report was ever published.
The evidently determined police ombudsman has conspicuously rejected Mr Stalker's advice to anyone asked to investigate the affairs of the RUC. He advised: "Go sick."
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