POLICE SERVICE of Northern Ireland Chief Constable Sir Hugh Orde is too willing to offer excuses for policing failures, the ardfheis heard.
Policing board member Alex Maskey used his speech on a debate on policing and community safety to deliver the strongest criticisms yet on Sir Hugh since Sinn Féin signed up to the new policing dispensation two years ago.
“Police officers need to concentrate on policing,” he said. “Politics needs to be left to politicians. Too often this chief constable had made political comment.” He said victims of crime and anti-social behaviour wanted to hear senior officers talk about how they will deliver for communities.
“Too often we get excuses, too often the chief constable has sought to explain away failures rather than accepting that faults and flaws still do exist and outlining proposals for ending them.”
Citizens did not want excuses, he said. They want “honesty, transparency and policies and strategies that will make a real difference now and in the future. That is the key.” Sinn Féin’s decision to engage with policing in the North was not “a blank cheque”, Mr Maskey said.
It was a strategic decision “taken after much internal discussion, a series of public meetings and against the history of our experiences”. He cited controversial cases including the murders of Pat Finucane, Rosemary Nelson, Robert Hamill and Pearse Jordan and the need for closure.
Reliable party sources are growing increasingly unhappy with Sir Hugh and believe that his recent, unsuccessful application for leadership of the London Metropolitan Police has added uncertainty to the leadership of the PSNI.
However, it is also understood the party does not have any other senior policing figure in mind to replace him. The imminent retirement of Deputy Chief Constable Paul Leighton removes the only other prominent figure thought capable of succeeding Sir Hugh.
Mr Maskey’s Assembly colleague, junior Minister Gerry Kelly told delegates that proposals contained in the recent Eames-Bradley report on dealing with the legacy of the Troubles were insufficient. He said their proposed five-year legacy commission and other ideas “fell very short of fundamental criteria”.
The party is in consultation on the proposals, but Mr Kelly stepped up his criticisms of the British government’s stance on the issue of truth recovery. “The British government was the major protagonist in the conflict in Ireland,” he said. “They therefore cannot be the objective facilitator of any truth recovery process.” He was supported in this by Martin Ferris who repeated claims that the British government could not be seen as neutral on the issue.