Editorial: The Ormeau Road PSNI officers were treated appallingly, yet the ombudsman adjudicates on them when we don't know details of a probe linked to her address

​​The appalling treatment of two PSNI officers who attended an illegal covid gathering on the Ormeau Road continues to be unresolved.

In a grisly footnote to it all, the Police Ombudsman of all people – whose absence from her post for many months continues to be unexplained – has now judged one of the officers to have been “insensitive”.

This ruling comes amid utterly disgraceful situation – facilitated by Stormont – in which Marie Anderson is back sitting in adjudication of police officers when it is more than 69 weeks since it was reported that the PSNI attended a domestic incident at an address linked to her.

A man was arrested in September 2023 after police attended the address in Co Down. The PSNI requested that West Midlands Police lead part of the investigation into the incident. Click here to read a recent article we published by a former head of discipline in the PSNI, Jon Burrows, in which he asks questions that remain unanswered about the case, such as the remarkable fact that police said they could not gain access to the address in question. Why not?

He pointed out that we still “know virtually nothing about this ongoing investigation that is linked to the holder of the Office of Police Ombudsman, despite the fact she is back at work and exercises immense power”.

Mr Burrows is also almost alone in pointing out that in the face of political pressure from Sinn Fein, the PSNI suspended one of the officers involved in the Ormeau Road incident and moved another – a move that was later found to be unlawful by a High Court judge. The officer was then disciplined in March 2024 but this was overturned on appeal.

As Mr Burrows has explained in detail, over many months “an innocent officer was scapegoated to placate political demands” after they were jostled and sworn at, and one was apparently slapped in the face.

It is beyond scandalous.