Editorial: The PSNI is right not to appeal court ruling against its disciplining of two officers, but that cannot be the end of the saga

​​It was quite extraordinary that the former PSNI chief constable Simon Byrne planned to appeal a devastating court judgment around the treatment of two officers.

A High Court judge found earlier this year that actions taken against the pair of junior PSNI officers over a Covid breach at an Ormeau Road Troubles memorial event in Belfast were unlawful. The details of the case that the ruling unveiled, and other aspects of it that have since come to light, showed the extent to which the PSNI was determined to give special treatment to Sinn Fein and Irish republicans.

We already knew from the Bobby Storey IRA terrorist funeral in 2021 that the PSNI let republicans behave as they wished with regard to lockdown restrictions – while, incidentally, SF was sanctimonious about those pandemic rules, and demanding more of them. We already knew that every investigation into that outrage, including the closing of Roselawn for the late IRA leader, in effect found that no-one was to blame – or be held accountable.

But the PSNI special treatment for SF after it put pressure on them in the Ormeau Road incident, and the attempt to punish two officers, showed the scale of the appeasement, at the highest levels, including by Mr Byrne. The Policing Board was not merely shown to be inept, it was allowed by Mr Byrne to sit in on watching footage of the incident, in effect sitting alongside a chief constable in an operational decision.

In a way an appeal would have been interesting. Would the Belfast courts have overturned the excellent first ruling? Had they been so foolish as to do so it would have had to go before the Supreme Court, which seems recently to have become less tolerant of bad NI court rulings. Yet the decision not to appeal is the right one. But it must not be the end of this disgraceful saga, which needs further investigation so its like never again happens in policing.