Editorial: ​PSNI fail to deny double standards on Irish sign vandalism, which they say is hate motivated yet police cannot tell us when they have described nationalist vandalism of signs as such

​Well, one thing is evident in the police reply to our query about their apparent double standards on signage vandalism – they aren’t embarrassed.

​The PSNI rushed to describe as “hate-motivated” the defacing of a dual language sign in east Belfast, which was put up as a result of Belfast City Council’s extremist Irish language sign policy despite a mere 16.8% of respondents supporting it, and 83.2% either not answering or opposing it (three quarters of those who answered did not want it).

That then begged the obvious query as to whether they have ever described the routine defacement of signs in the west of Northern Ireland that say either Londonderry or Northern Ireland as an act of “hate”. The police simply did not answer that question. So we can assume that the answer is no, or they would give us examples.

In other words, as is no surprise to even moderate unionists, the police operate a dual policy with regard to the vandalism of signs. Yet they repeated in their answer that what happened in east Belfast was ‘hate’ – so they aren’t embarrassed at their dual approach.

If a sign is put up as a result of an extremist, republican-led language policy, where residents do not want it, and vote against it by an overwhelming margin, the PSNI will rush in to describe it as, in effect, a hate crime. And when nationalists in swathes of the province will not accept signs that so much as state the name of the state that the Belfast Agreement they often cite recognised, Northern Ireland, police say nothing.

To be clear, we entirely oppose vandalism, and indeed think that vandalism of public property is something a well run society must not tolerate. But we want consistency that the police do not seem to apply here (we remain open to them giving us examples of them calling republican vandalism ‘hate’).