Police body slams ex-officers
FORMER police officers have no right to comment on the PSNI, their former colleagues have said.
The Northern Ireland Police Federation — which represents the vast majority of PSNI officers — said that those who had left the force “forfeited” the right to speak about policing.
In an editorial in its official magazine, the federation — which is chaired by former RUC officer Terry Spence — singled out former RUC officers who have raised questions surrounding how the PSNI has re-hired RUC officers paid off under the Patten scheme as civilian police workers. Though it did not use their names, the article appears to refer to retired Assistant Chief Constable Alan McQuillan and retired Detective Chief Superintendent Norman Baxter, who spoke out about the issue last month.
Both men have decades of top-level policing experience and Mr Baxter said that the re-hiring of officers showed that the Patten scheme had been a failure and he questioned whether the millions paid to a recruitment agency had been well spent.
However, in the magazine editorial, the Police Federation said: “Of course some senior ex-officers have thought it necessary to intervene with unhelpful criticisms of the rehiring practice.
“They could have chose to stay on to help overcome a threat that still exists and if unchecked will only get worse. When they left they also forfeited the right to comment with any legitimacy and therefore should know better.”
The editorial also appeared to savage Sinn Fein, though it did not name the party, by accusing some politicians of being “hysterically anti-RUC”.
In an apparent reference to republican political representatives, it said: “The reality is that certain politicians are hysterically anti-RUC, to the extent that they would evidently prefer unqualified people to be recruited, even if that meant the effective functioning of the PSNI would be seriously hampered.
“And they cannot argue that their concern is for the public purse, since there has been no similar outcry over the decades old practice in the education sector of early retiring teachers being rehired by the same schools, or to the newly introduced generous pension terms to encourage experienced teachers to retire.”
It added: “No matter how unpalatable this may seem in some quarters, it will take time for PSNI officers to build the same necessary expertise and skills of their civilian mentors but hopefully the requirement to fall back on ex-officers will only be temporary.”
The Police Federation said that the PSNI had been “fortunate” that it was able to fall back on retired RUC officers to counter the dissident republican terrorist threat.
When told of the editorial last night, Mr McQuillan told the News Letter: “I have consistently made it clear that if these jobs were advertised the retired officers would and should be the first to get them.
“Therefore I am surprised to find that the Police Federation doesn’t recognise that former members have been employed in casual and insecure positions when they could have been occupying safe jobs with a long-term future. But that is a matter for them.”
Mr Baxter said he did not wish to comment on the editorial.
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Weather for Belfast
Tuesday 29 May 2012
Today
Sunny spells
Temperature: 12 C to 21 C
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