'Your children will not want this': Jon Boutcher's stark warning to republican bombers after Dunmurry police station blast, as PSNI chief constable pledges culprits will be found and arrested
‘Your children will not want this’, PSNI chief constable Jon Boutcher has said in a stark message to the “idiots and mindless thugs” behind a proxy bomb attack on Dunmurry police station.
On Saturday night a delivery driver was hijacked at gunpoint in the heavily nationalist Twin brook area of Belfast, and forced to drive to Dunmurry police station on the outskirts of the city with an explosive device fitted to his car.
The driver, described by the chief constable as “an incredibly brave guy”, alerted officers who evacuated the area before the bomb went off with no casualties.
As police continue to probe the second proxy bomb attack on a police station in as many months, following March's similar horrific incident in Lurgan, Mr Boutcher today said the force expects dissident republicans the New IRA to be behind Saturday’s blast as well.
Speaking on BBC Radio’s Stephen Nolan Show, he said: “We’re seeing a period of behaviour from these utterly mindless thugs – who nobody supports, nobody is with them, nobody is behind them – we’re seeing a period of behaviour that we need to address very quickly, arrest them and put them where they belong, which is in prison.”
Giving a direct message to the perpetrators, he stated: “We will find you, we will arrest you, we will prosecute you. Your next generation, your children, will not want this; we want a better society for everybody here.”
The police will be increasing their security measures, the chief constable said, though officers will continue to serve the public as usual.
“They are the thin green line that keeps society safe, and nobody – not these idiots, not these mindless thugs – is going to distract us from doing that job,” he said.
Although he hopes the Lurgan and Dunmurry bombs aren’t evidence of a mounting campaign against the force, Mr Boutcher described the second proxy attack as “a very worrying development”.
He said: “It’s incumbent on everybody in Northern Ireland to stand together and condemn this cowardly act, because it’s perpetrated by people who have nothing to offer; they’re simply self-indulgent and ignorant. Their only interest is in themselves.”
He added: “Any attack against the PSNI, any attack against our officers and staff, is an attack against everybody in Northern Ireland. We do not want these things to occur any more.
"Our police officers and staff spend so much of their time now working tirelessly to keep people safe, against harms online, against our children and vulnerable people, making sure that we’re dealing with domestic abuse and violence against women and girls.
“We are within those communities working really hard to keep people safe; this is something from the distant past and there is no place for it, absolutely no place for it, in today’s society.”
Mr Boucher stated that he sees details “all the time” of attempts to identify police officers “for nefarious reasons”, adding that political leaders need to “link together arm in arm, standing shoulder to shoulder” to back the PSNI, the same way forces elsewhere in the UK and Ireland are supported – something he stated is lacking in Northern Ireland.
“Has that happened as I want it to happen here? No it hasn’t,” he said.