PSNI CHIEF constable Matt Baggott has told DUP supporters that dissident republican paramilitaries were a “substantial minority” who continued to pose a “severe” threat to security in Northern Ireland.
They were developing technical expertise and were using a variety of tactics ranging from car bombs to carrying out hand grenade attacks, Mr Baggott said at the DUP annual conference in in east Belfast yesterday.
They posed a threat that must not be underestimated. “I have got to respect these people . . . I respect their ability and their technical capability. If I underplay that then I have got a problem,” he told DUP delegates.
Mr Baggott said the continuing police focus on dissidents was “to keep them on the back foot” through good policing, intelligence gathering, intervention and through isolating those involved in dissident activity.
He said that last year 17 people were charged with terrorist offences, but that had risen sharply to 74 so far this year.
He said the PSNI was the finest counter-terrorism police force in the world.
“We are on the front foot on this and we will keep on the front foot,” he added.
Mr Baggott said there was strong overt and covert co-operation between the PSNI and the Garda. He paid tribute to Garda Commissioner Fachtna Murphy, who is about to retire, referring to his unprompted comment that an attack on the PSNI was an attack on the Garda Síochána.
Taking questions from DUP delegates, the chief constable said too often there was a “one-dimensional” view of human rights and that there must also be a debate about the human rights of his officers. He referred to criticism of the police for publishing photographs of young people allegedly involved in rioting which prompted claims that this breached their human rights.
But these could be young people who had thrown blast and petrol bombs and had attempted to lure police officers into situations where they could be murdered, he said. The criminal justice system needed to trust the common sense of officers working at the frontline. He said there was a requirement to move from “the age of regulation to the age of responsibility”, adding that “the human rights debate needs to be readjusted”.
Mr Baggott told delegates that there are now more than 580 additional officers on operational duties who had been taken away from bureaucratic work.
He had to be “realistic” about budgets in the current economic situation but repeated that this was “not the time to cut police numbers of capability”.
