Policing Board should focus on PSNI response to current terror and crime

The scandal is the overwhelming burden that has been put on the police to trawl over their vast collection of old records in recent years.

A related scandal is the extent to which the PSNI legacy has been overwhelmed examining historic state killings.

With regard to the searching of records, the current PSNI leadership have for some time adopted a policy of apology.

At public meetings, sometimes alongside republicans, they have appealed to the better nature of their critics, and tried to outline the impossible task that is being asked of them.

This is understandable but it simply isn’t working. The narrative of collusion, state murder and cover-up is too entrenched, and it is barely challenged by a host of people who are prominent in the British state, or were formerly so. And so the terrorist liars and mass murderers are indulged in their self justifying conspiracy nonsense.

This whole approach to legacy needs a root and branch overhaul.

If state funded civil cases are going to lead to orders to open files, and if legacy inquests, at perhaps £1 million per inquest, are going to get the go ahead (and London was clearly itching to grant such funding at the time of last year’s near deal), with the state killing of dozens of terrorists among the hearings to get such expensive scrutiny, then we need a massive, sustained focus on those who orchestrated decades of murder and mayhem.

The Historical Investigations Unit proposed at Stormont House in 2014 will not lead to such scrutiny. Contributors to our legacy scandal essay series even fear it will be overwhelmed with RUC misconduct probes.

So as Jim Allister MLA, who along with politicians such as Doug Beattie MLA is challenging this imbalance, says, the Policing Board cannot afford to spend much time examining the files error.

There is a host of other urgent matters to attend to, including police response to present terror and major crime.