THE arrest of two women at a pro-Palestine demonstration in the city centre on Saturday morning wasn’t the most outrageous thing that the PSNI has done in its 24 years in existence.
Its unswerving commitment to the discredited force it replaced continues to be its number one priority.
Its effectiveness in hiding the truth of the RUC’s active role both in killing Catholics and facilitating their murder continues in stark contrast to its current failure to rein in those loyalist paramilitary groups with which it was once aligned.
While these outrageous insults to a community it was supposed to begin serving on its inception in 2001 remain the PSNI’s most egregious failures, the institutional suspicion of and hostility that marks the force's daily treatment of the nationalist and republican community has brought the PSNI to the cusp of rejection. The truth is, the behaviour of officers on the ground is a faithful reflection of a management-level determination to ensure that nothing has changed except the badge.
Every year, as the marching season gathers pace and the bonfires grow ever higher, the PSNI unfailingly underscores its total disinterest in dealing with the flagrant and outrageous public displays of loyalist hate and sectarianism which are to be seen all year round, but which infest this place from the spring through to the autumn. But we’ve seen a man in Moygashel handcuffed and arrested for attempting to take down a lamppost tribute to a UVF Miami Showband killer while the same police stood by and watched the poster go up. We’ve seen the PSNI not only invade a tribute to the dead of the Sean Graham atrocity, but handcuff and arrest a survivor of the massacre. More recently, we’ve seen the Met level charges against a member of the band Kneecap over his waving of a flag at a concert – a development which starkly emphasises the complete failure of the PSNI to act against the most outrageous and inflammatory displays of sectarian hate.
OUTRAGE: The PSNI's February 2021 arrest of Mark Sykes, shot and injured in the Ormeau bookies massacre, created a storm of protest
In and of itself, the decision to arrest Sue Pentel and Martine McCullough at a pro-Palestine demo on Saturday morning is just another, all-too-familiar example of the PSNI showing us how not to police a peaceful event. Bu at a time when families are being intimidated and ejected from their homes by loyalist thugs without let or hindrance, without a PSNI officer or vehicle to be seen, the decision has pushed the nationalist and republican community to the very edge of its patience.
This community has more than kept its part of the bargain that was struck in 2001 when the PSNI replaced the RUC with a promise of a new start and a brighter future. The majority agreed to give the PSNI a chance, despite the fact that members of the feared and hated RUC were moved over en masse to the new police service, and despite the deep and understandable misgivings that the transfer provoked. We accepted the PSNI on to our streets and into our homes – and we waited; and we waited; and we waited. But far from seeing a brave new world of policing, we puffed out our cheeks and shook our heads with every latest example of PSNI bad faith and bad behaviour. While in the background PSNI officers with bars on their epaulettes devoted endless energy and resources fighting the grieving families of Troubles victims, their public-facing constables also displayed their commitment to the past by showing themselves to be nothing more than an RUC tribute act.
The PSNI’s reputation among those it was created to entice is shot to bits. The question is: Can it be resurrected? The chances don’t look great. Rather than issue a cautious and non-committal statement as Saturday’s shocking events went viral on social media, the PSNI top brass doubled down and gave the officers involved in the incident full and unconditional support. It was another telling example of how the PSNI sees itself: A guardian not of the public – a guardian of its own, past and present.
The lack of Catholics and nationalists in the PSNI has never been so blindingly obvious. There is a complete failure at the top to acknowledge, much less represent, the needs and feelings of non-unionists. What makes this problem so hard – perhaps impossible – to fix is that there is no understanding at the top of the damage that is being done. Just as the RUC in the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s continued along its path to oblivion utterly confident in its righteousness, the PSNI too is so bereft of meaningful non-unionist voices that every crazy decision is rubber-stamped with a unanimity that is as self-assured as it is self-destructive.
For many in this community, the PSNI experiment is over and those dissident republicans who warned all those years ago of what lay ahead have been vindicated in spades. For others, it feels more like the beginning of the end. The latter cohort is likely still a majority, but if it is, the coming summer represents a test which the PSNI cannot afford to fail. Every march, every flag and every lamppost is now a challenge – a challenge which the PSNI has set itself.
