PSNI has '˜lost its soul' over policing the past

A victims' campaigner who lost his brother in an IRA gun attack has suggested that the Province's police force has 'lost its soul' because of a lack of commitment to solving Troubles murders.
By The Newsroom
Published 30th May 2017, 12:00 BST
Updated 4th Jun 2017, 20:54 BST
George Hamilton, pictured at the funeral of Martin McGuinnessGeorge Hamilton, pictured at the funeral of Martin McGuinness
George Hamilton, pictured at the funeral of Martin McGuinness

Ken Funston made the comments to the News Letter in the wake of news last week that the chief constable is to begin scaling back on investigations being carried out by its Legacy Investigations Branch (LIB).

Chief constable George Hamilton said that, due to continuing budget constraints, he has decided to reduce spending on Troubles cases and is seeking to transfer officers from historic cases to current-day ones (READ MORE HERE).

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The details of how he is going to do this, such as which investigations are going to be curtailed, are not yet known.

Whilst Mr Hamilton has made comments previously about the difficulty in balancing resources between historic and present-day policing, his remarks last week are a concrete commitment to begin a drive to concentrate more on the latter at the expense of the former.

Mr Funston, advocacy manager for victims’ pressure group the South East Fermanagh Foundation, whose ex-UDR brother Ronnie was shot dead by the IRA in 1984, said he does not think Mr Hamilton “fully understands the impact of the statement”.

He said: “In essence he says he’s not got the resources to investigate crimes of the past, so we should forget about it and think of the here and now...

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“When do we decide that something becomes historical? 1998 is the cut-off obviously for the Good Friday Agreement. When does he say: ‘Well, I haven’t really got the manpower now to deal with anything pre-2005?’ Do we take this on another step?”

He added: “He obviously has decided legacy is not a priority. Well unfortunately, chief constable, for a lot of people legacy is a priority.”

He said the PSNI does still seem to have resources to continue probing some old cases, such as the killing of German tourist Inga Maria Hauser in 1988 (a crime apparently unrelated to the Troubles) – adding that it is right for them to do so.

However Mr Funston added that, at the same time, the chief constable “hasn’t got the resources to investigate the murders of his own colleagues and the soldiers who prevented this country falling into total anarchy... How can we have full confidence in a police service that has lost its soul in this way?”

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When Mr Hamilton announced his planned curbs to legacy investigations last Wednesday, he said the numbers of police officers look set to drop by 238 in the next two years as a result of renewed budget squeeze, taking the force’s manpower strength down to 6,600.

Related topics:PSNIProvinceIRA