The North's Police Service is being stretched to breaking point by the ongoing street violence, the acting PSNI Chief Constable, Mr Colin Cramphorn, warned.
In a stark statement to the Policing Board's corporate policy committee, Mr Cramphorn said the cumulative pressures on police resources had left little over to deliver day-to-day policing and had overstretched operations to a "critical" level.
The Policing Board's chairman, Prof Desmond Rea, said he was seriously concerned by the statement. While the board was committed to ensuring effective and efficient policing it recognised that a normal policing service could not be delivered if substantial resources were continually being diverted.
According to PSNI figures, 731 officers have been injured in public order situations over the past 12 months, with around 10 per cent of PSNI regulars and full-time reservists on sick leave, many due to stress and fatigue.
Mr Cramphorn said community policing, as envisaged by Patten, had become an "unfulfillable aspiration", due not just to the shortage of officers or money but the lack of capability - "that mixture of capacity and skills necessary to meet demands", he said.
"Civic society and the body politic has not delivered. As a consequence, the benign policing environment envisaged by Patten has never materialised and the overstretch on the capability of the Police Service to meet the demands made upon it is a direct consequence of this failure."
He cited the ongoing public order situation in parts of Belfast, the increased threat from both loyalist and republican paramilitaries and the "disproportionate" level of major crime in the North.
As to public order, Mr Cramphorn said his officers in co-operation with the British army had managed to deliver the most tranquil marching season in five years. "By interposing ourselves day after day, month after month, between the communities in a few closely defined geographic areas, primarily in Belfast, we have prevented them from descending into an orgy of violence that would have surely cost many more lives and caused widespread destruction."
On the paramilitary threat, his officers were now operating at an "intensity greater than at any time since the 1997 cessations of hostilities. Much of this effort goes unseen and unnoticed by the population at large and is, therefore, not recognised or credited. But it is a significant diversion of resources away from 'normal policing'."
A British army spokesman confirmed that the army had mounted 1,170 patrols last week, compared to a weekly average of 350 two years ago, to help police make up for their manpower shortage.
Two fire-engines had to be abandoned in north Belfast as they came under attack during serious disturbances yesterday afternoon. There were also reports of shots fired in the Ardoyne area and a number of blast and nail bombs thrown.
A man was injured when an improvised explosive device went off. His condition in hospital was later described as "stable". British army bomb disposal experts were dealing with a number of suspicious objects in Ardoyne yesterday afternoon after defusing a pipe bomb in the area on Wednesday night.
At least nine police officers were injured during loyalist riots in east Belfast on Wednesday night. Masked men threw petrol bombs at the security forces who fired 27 plastic bullets.
A woman was beaten in front of her 12-year-old daughter by 10 men wielding iron bars in the Tamery Pass area of east Belfast on Wednesday night. She suffered a suspected broken arm and leg in the attack.