DOES PSNI Chief Constable Jon Boutcher simply have no idea what he’s doing? Or does he know full well what he’s doing and just doesn’t care?
Neither of these possibilities is optimal for a man in a position of such sensitivity and import, but whichever obtains, the truth is that the former Bedfordshire Chief Constable is showing all the political nous and sure-footedness expected of a man whose last job was in Luton.
While Mr Boutcher may have received a request from the Home Office or the Metropolitan Police (or both) to send officers to carry out arrests at an anti-genocide demo in London on Saturday, the decision to do so was his, and his alone. He may well have felt pressure to accede to any request or requests he received, but his priority is the people the PSNI is tasked with serving and protecting, not the political needs of colleagues and/or politicians in London.
A police force which is already widely seen by nationalists and republicans as less than robust when it comes to dealing with still-active and murderous loyalist paramilitaries should be working to reassure people that it’s as tough on the UVF and the UDA as it is on older women wearing keffiyehs or putting Free Palestine stickers on a bank ATM. But no; Mr Boutcher ploughs on and gives that perception of partiality a powerful image.
We’ve seen both pictures:
1. Two PSNI officers in casual uniform with their thumbs tucked in their lapels à la Dixon of Dock Green strolling at the head of a crowd of hundreds of members of the illegal UVF parading along the Newtownards Road.
2. Officers in flak jackets carrying OAPs feet-first out of Trafalgar Square for the crime of wanting to stop the slaughter of innocents.
Seen separately, the pictures are appalling in and of themselves; viewed side by side, they tell a shocking story of double standards and strategic stupidity.
And the asinine deployment of officers to perform a task in London they are not allowed to undertake here is only one aspect of this mess. Mr Boutcher has been vocal – and rightly so – about the lack of resources available to him to do the job he wants to do. He has been particularly vocal in saying that he is unable with the resources at his disposal to address the spiralling problem of violence against women and girls in the North of Ireland. And yet on Saturday – the day of the week when instances of domestic abuse of women and girls are at their peak – an unknown number of officers was dispatched to London to enforce a highly controversial piece of new legislation aimed at criminalising opposition to Britain’s part in the slaughter of Gazans.
Are the complex and challenging tasks of policing this divided society not enough to fill Mr Boutcher’s in-tray? Does he feel that sending his officers to do in London what they’re daily failing to do here is going to give a boost to the force’s ailing reputation among non-unionists?
The mistakes are gathering up as thick and deep as the autumn leaves. One way or another, they need to stop.
