Jon Burrows: ​The least the brave officers of the PSNI deserve is a leadership with moral courage that has their backs when the going gets tough

Whilst the precise nature of Sinn Féin’s communication with senior officers is contested, its undisputed that the decision to suspend an innocent police officer was demonstrably taken for improper political purposes. Real or perceived, the chief and deputy chief constable believed they were told an officer needed to be suspended for political purposes and instead of defending the rule of law and the independence of their office, they unlawfully suspended him.

I was deeply disturbed when I reviewed the material for the judicial review into this suspension. The corporate failure to brief the officers about the annual memorial event negligently exposed them to an unimaginably challenging scenario, during which they got injured. The organisers of the memorial to the terrible atrocity in Sean Graham’s bookmakers ought to have ensured it was covid compliant and engaged with police in advance.

The PSNI leadership and political leaders should have focused on learning lessons; but the febrile nature of our politics clashed with timid police leadership and a scapegoat had to be found. So, two junior officers, law abiding and blameless, had the full weight of Northern Ireland’s toxicity brought crashing down on their shoulders. This was the most shameful abdication of leadership I’ve ever known.

There has been intense focus on the alleged political interference around the suspension decision. However, it’s been relatively overlooked that the decisions of senior police leaders were fatally infected by politics at the very outset of the incident. The full facts reveal the arresting officers encountered unlawful and politically motivated interference in the discharge of their lawful powers of arrest.

The sworn and uncontested evidence of one officer was that he received an instruction to de-arrest the detained person and leave him at a community centre. This instruction from a senior police officer followed political petition from an unknown person to another senior officer. Coming within minutes of the arrest, the communication between the politician and the senior officer had to be by telephone.

The constable hadn’t established the detained person's name, and no senior officer could have known even basic facts of the case. The lawful authority for an arrest sits with a constable alone under the office they hold and remains so until arrival at a custody suite. I’ve never known such an arbitrary interference in an officer's execution of his sworn and lawful duties. We don’t know what politician rang which senior police officer and if there are written records.

Wisely the officers, in accordance with law, brought the detained person to Musgrave police station. Legislation lays down the rules of police detention to prevent arbitrary abuses and make the custody officer independent of the police investigation and impervious to senior officer direction. They are guardians of the law and due process.

It’s a legal requirement when a detained person enters the perimeter of the police station that the custody officer opens a custody record. Alarmingly, however, the custody officer met the arresting officer in the station yard and it’s clear from video evidence that the custody officer was ordered not to book in the detained person, in advance of hearing any facts from the arresting officer.

We don’t know what senior officer made this order, if there is a written record of it, and why the legal requirement to open a custody record wasn’t met. The detained person simply walks away.

These serious breaches of law and policy were known to the chief and deputy chief constable on February 6 but no investigation ensued and instead they punished the law-abiding officers who had been assaulted and subjected to sectarian abuse. The PSNI’s leadership’s zero tolerance policy on hate crime clearly doesn’t apply when their own officers are the victims.

The prima facie offences recorded on video by the crowd who surrounded the officers included assault, disorderly behaviour and obstructing a constable were not investigated and therefore senior officers failed to comply with their lawful duty under sec 32 of the Police (NI) Act 2000.

The departures from law and policy are staggering and the absence of record keeping alarming. The ability for a politician on the basis of a phone call to a senior officer to circumvent sacrosanct laws of arrest and detention should deeply disturb anyone who believes in democratic policing and the rule of law.

We know Justice Scoffield found the decision to suspend the Constable was outwith the permissible statutory regulations because it was fatally infected by politics; but a wider lens shows the improper accession to political petition started earlier. The speed, ease and effectiveness of political petition when combined with the absence of written records raises disturbing concerns about culture.

A criminal and misconduct investigation is required into officers who did break the law and who victimised the young officers who certainly did not. A judge led inquiry is required into the politicisation of senior police leadership which also examines the conduct of politicians.

I was shocked but unsurprised when I reviewed the material for this case and previously warned that there were serious problems in the PSNI’s leadership culture. Policing in Northern Ireland has always been uniquely physically and psychologically hazardous and officers here display collective courage unparalleled in Western Europe. The least they deserve is to be led by those with commensurate moral courage to remain impervious to political pressure and to have their backs when the going gets tough.

Jon Burrows is a retired senior PSNI officer.