'Republicans to blame for £1m Ardoyne bill'
DUP culture minister Nelson McCausland has blamed the "sectarian intolerance of some republicans" after it emerged that policing the riots in north Belfast over the Twelfth cost more than £1 million.
The Policing Board was told yesterday that it had cost 1.1 million to police riots which broke out over three consecutive nights after a feeder parade passed Ardoyne shops on July 12.
Chief Constable Matt Baggott told the meeting that the money could have funded a neighbourhood policing team of eight officers working in Ardoyne for three years.
Police came under fire from missiles and explosives during the riots and several officers were injured during the violence, including a female officer who had a piece of masonry dropped on her head.
More than 40 people have so far been charged with the trouble which also sparked in other areas of Belfast over the same period.
Mr Baggott said as a consequence the area "will no longer get the 24 police officers over the three years that they would have got had we not spent 1.1 million policing that parade".
The police are facing demands to make savings with a recruitment freeze one of the steps forced upon managers as part of wider public service cutbacks.
Mr Baggott added: "The reality is that we spend 1.1 million in a three-day period preventing people from losing their lives and preventing disturbances from moving to something far more traumatic and damaging. There was not the control of the communities, there was not the control of the young people."
The violence was part of an upsurge in dissident republican activity which has seen bomb attacks on a police station in Londonderry and the injury of three children by an explosion in Lurgan.
Mr Baggott said there had been a three-fold increase in the number of people facing terrorist charges this year compared to last year, from 17 to 54.
He faced criticism from a board member about the police use of baton rounds to fight off rioters.
Mr McCausland said there is a misconception that "policing parades costs too much", but said it was "not the parades but the protests" which required the policing.
"This has been witnessed not only in north Belfast but also in Rasharkin and other places across Northern Ireland where the parade passes off peacefully but the protestors then wreak havoc," he said.
"That is why it is vital that new legislation governing both parades and protests is brought forward and we take a fresh approach on this matter."
Ulster Unionist parading spokesman Michael Copeland said the PSNI like the Royal Ulster Constabulary before them deserve the support of all right thinking people.
"In the current or any other economic climate this is a vast amount of money that some would justly claim could be put to better use," he said.
"A solution must be found to this annual problem, however I deeply suspect that no solution which respects the freedoms to which the two sides in the argument are entitled would be acceptable to the misguided, mindless republican thugs responsible for the rioting."
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Sunday 27 May 2012
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