HOW long do we say 'Legacy is damaging the PSNI' without saying the RUC needs to be disbanded?

When the decision was made to found the PSNI a lot of money was made available to members of the RUC who didn’t fancy being employed in a new body with new systems of accountability. However, a vanguard of the RUC stayed to shape the organisation in its own image, to maintain the reputation of the RUC, and to protect former RUC officers from scrutiny regarding violations.

Not every member of the RUC, or members of the PSNI once in the RUC, were in that vanguard, but many were, and they succeeded. For many the PSNI is now the Sellafield to the RUC’s Windscale, the Snickers to its Marathon, the Artist Previously Known as RUC.  

So many had hoped that the days of partial policing were over and that policies of collusion and shoot-to-kill were in the past. But the RUC vanguard kept them in the present by guiding the PSNI into the defence of collusion, assassination and cover-ups.

But this is not news. It is well over ten years since this was acknowledged and publicly stated by those that were awake. When Catholic recruitment dropped like a stone after 50:50 recruitment ended, Sinn Féin was blamed. The deflectors would say “If only Sinn Féin held our recruitment posters or came to the graduations then the Catholics would join." This was not a lack of understanding, it was a deliberate ruse to avoid the change in policy that was needed.

When Relatives for Justice informed the Roseann Mallon inquest about information evenings being held by the Retired Police Officers Association, and it was revealed that serving senior officers were guiding former RUC officers who were being subpoenaed to inquests, there was no material scandal. When the PSNI systemically held up inquests and investigations into the deaths of citizens for decades with excuses about complex national security screening, only for us to find out that most of that redaction was actually of newspapers, there was likewise no change. And when the PSNI was found to be acting illegally when examining state killings via the Historic Enquiries Team, there was lip service, but no more.

Ten years of constant stories, news items and court revelations have led us to the point where we now realise that the PSNI has systemically engaged in the illegal cover-up of crimes and spying on those who might expose it in the legal, journalistic and human rights worlds. It has been a covert war waged against bereaved families, our community and our peace process, and the signs have been there all along. And yet it is only being called out now because young Taigs are voting with their feet and staying well away and there is no-one else to blame.

How we reached this point when the PSNI has so many accountability mechanisms surrounding it is a serious question that requires answers. The PSNI stands utterly complicit in RUC systemic wrongdoing, to the point where change seems impossible without revolutionary change. Hopes for such fundamental intent are low, however, when ultimate responsibility lies in a Department for Justice where silence, inertia and avoidance could be the motto.

Surely a public inquiry into the PSNI and its behaviour is now required.