
ANDRÉE MURPHY: Arlene’s got it right on Chief Constable – but in the wrong way
SO the place is in a meltdown over Bobby Storey’s funeral again. We have Arlene Foster calling for the Chief Constable to go. We have a respected commentator saying the whole Executive will have to come down. And we have the stoic Simon Byrne at a podium saying he is staying where he is, with the background predictable, unfailingly flawed narrative that the PSNI is “caught in the middle”. Well, this time Arlene is right – but not for the reasons she thinks she is. Byrne is not caught in any “middle” and should go. Simon Byrne’s position as Chief Constable has been fundamentally called into question in the context of dealing with the past. In recent months his response to the murder of a human rights solicitor and the response to the assault of a dignified and socially distanced memorial service and the subsequent arrest of Mark Sykes have placed him full square in the public eye. And his position with it. Or should have. Following the appalling vista on the Ormeau Road Byrne asked to meet the families affected by the atrocity in which five people died and seven were injured. They said they would meet him if assured of the status of Mark Sykes, and that he was not under threat of prosecution. The Chief Constable refused to give such an undertaking. He refused to say that Mark Sykes was not guilty of any offence on the day he was laying flowers at the Sean Grahams bookmakers and officers of the PSNI double-handcuffed him, drove him around Belfast in the back of a car for an hour and released him without charge. The families refuse to meet him with such mendacity hanging over their dignified heads. Simon Byrne had in November reacted to the Secretary of State’s egregious response to the UK Supreme Court with eye blinking patheticness. When Brandon Lewis made his statement to the House of Commons refusing a public inquiry and saying the PSNI would look into the killing, Byrne’s chop suey of a response was to try to be all things to all people. Ultimately, he sidestepped his human rights obligations to the Finucanes and the rest of us.