THE RUC's Emergency Housing Unit is continuing to deal with a number of applications by police officers for permanent rehousing, following serious intimidation and threats issued against them and their families during the Drumcree stand off.
It is believed that almost 150 officers against whom personal threats were issued in relation to themselves, their families and their homes, in the period from July 6th to 11th, temporarily vacated their dwellings.
Most of these have now returned home, but according to figures released last week, 12 officers and their families still remain out of their houses. Some 25 other members of the force have applied to be rehoused away from where they are now living.
The RUC was unable yesterday to update these figures or to give specific details of cases.
It is now clear, however, that the scale of the intimidation of police officers by Orangemen and their supporters at Drumcree was intense over the short period of several days.
In 1985-1986, over a much longer period of loyalist violence against the Anglo Irish Agreement, over 500 police homes were attacked and 150 families were forced to move.
It was later revealed by the then Chief Constable, Sir John Hermon, that the RUC had contingency plans to evacuate hundreds of police families to houses in Britain which had been made available through the Association of Chief Police Officers in England.
A spokesman for the Police Federation for Northern Ireland said that the scale of the intimidation showed the cost in human terms of policing. There was no such thing as a safe community and RUC officers were most vulnerable where their families were concerned.
"We totally condemn this kind of thing," the spokesman said. "It is just thuggery and achieves nothing. It certainly does not undermine the determination of the force to do their job."
He said that there had been no lack of enthusiasm by RUC officers to do their duty at the Drumcree stand off. Far from officers calling in sick, they had voluntarily come off leave and sick leave to support their colleagues.