The policing Oversight Commissioner warns of delays in implementing Patten and a rise in organised crime, reports Dan Keenan, Northern News Editor
Mr Tom Constantine is quick to praise the architecture of the new policing arrangements in Northern Ireland.
The Oversight Commissioner, charged with reviewing implementation of the Patten report on the North's police service, lauds the quality of senior officers in the PSNI, admires the achievements of the 19-member Policing Board and holds in high esteem Ms Nuala O'Loan, the Police Ombudsman.
However, his seventh report on the application of Mr Chris Patten's 175 recommendations on the future of policing, and his fifth since the creation of the PSNI in November 2001, criticises delays in some reforms. He also sounds an ominous warning about the growth of organised crime.
The former police chief of New York State repeats earlier criticism of a lack of an adequate training facility and delays in building a new £100 million police college.
He told The Irish Times yesterday: "Not a spade of dirt has been turned over . . . All changes, whether it's policing with the community, the district command units, devolved authority - all require tremendous training commitments. The present facility is totally inadequate. All Patten's recommendations . . . have to be implemented as a package."
He added: "This academy should have been built a long time ago. Every major police service in the world has a police facility that is much better than this.
"To give an example, if you took Queen's \ and all the classes and professors and put them in an industrial building down town and said 'This is Queen's', it would obviously not be as effective."
Mr Constantine also endorses Mr Patten's prediction that paramilitaries would edge towards organised crime, drugs-trafficking and extortion.
"Unfortunately that prediction was deadly accurate," he said. "What you have now is narcotics traffic that is very tightly organised. Gangs organise it, leaders profit from it and citizens suffer."
He said the intimidation factor was increasingly significant, and this affected public co-operation with the police.
"I have seen reports from business people who say that extortion is having a chilling effect. All this has an insidious effect on society because they begin to lose confidence in the government to protect them."
The former head of the US Drugs Enforcement Agency says strong legislation is needed to battle conspiracy and to protect witnesses. He also touches on a lingering controversy that has affected former RUC investigations in the past, ranging from the murder of Mr Pat Finucane to the Omagh bombing.
"There is a need to take numbers and abilities of people from Special Branch activities and make sure they are communicating with the criminal investigation division, which has been woefully inadequate," he said.
Public co-operation was also essential. "It's a two-way street. Police can't do it all by themselves. They need citizens willing to be witnesses, willing to provide information. But as long as they are intimidated you have this circular effect . . . which seems to be growing."
Mr Constantine refuses to single out individuals or parties for criticism, but he makes it clear that community support for the police and the endorsement of politicians is essential.
The work done so far to establish a new policing culture in the North "will have a limited effect if the entire community does not support the police". He adds: "The common enemy here is not the police, not political leaders, not government institutions. The really dangerous adversary that you have are individuals or criminal organisations who are creating tremendous harm."
He urges greater "civilianisation" of the police service, wants to see more officers on policing duties and greater decentralisation of power from police headquarters to district level.