Executive needs to be ‘stronger’ in response to racist behaviours, says Boutcher

The Stormont Executive needs to take a “stronger” stance over tackling racist behaviours in Northern Ireland, the chief constable has said.

Jon Boutcher made the comments as he faced questions at the Policing Board over delays removing anti-Muslim posters on lampposts in the Rathcoole estate in Newtownabbey.

Last week Assistant Chief Constable Bobby Singleton expressed frustration at the response of the Department for Infrastructure (DfI), branding it “unacceptable” that the posters had been allowed to stay on the lampposts for around seven weeks when he would have anticipated a response from the DfI to remove them within “hours” of them being erected.

Mr Singleton said the PSNI ultimately took the decision to take down the posters themselves.

In response to the claims, the department said that Infrastructure Minister John O’Dowd wrote to Mr Boutcher asking the police to remove the posters as he believed their erection constituted a crime.

Mr Boutcher told the Policing Board on Thursday that on receipt of the letter from Mr O’Dowd he asked to see the posters and then gave a “clear instruction” to officers to remove them.

The chief constable said he has now written to Mr O’Dowd to ask for a meeting to discuss how the PSNI and his department can cooperate in similar scenarios in the future.

“We were too slow to do it in my view, collectively, there’s responsibilities not just for the PSNI in this,” he said of the removal of the posters.

“We’ve written back to the minister at the Department for Infrastructure to get round a table, to understand how we, with a shared endeavour to make sure that we address any form of this sort of hatred and hate crime, how we can deal with it, to reassure our communities.”

Mr Boutcher then highlighted recent conversations he had had with families from ethnic minority communities in which they shared stories about repeatedly being targeted by anti-social behaviour and incidents of criminal damage.

“This is something that we all have got to have a shared endeavour for,” he said.

“It goes to the Programme for Government around safer communities, and I think we need to be stronger at the Executive level around these behaviours.

“But it’s something that I want to assure you, that it’s a strategic priority for us, and that we’ll be doing everything that we can to enforce the law around anybody who puts these hateful posters up or commits any hate crime.

“And this team (PSNI leadership team) and our officers and staff are entirely behind that position.”