Parties have not stood shoulder to shoulder to support police – Chief Constable

Political parties in Northern Ireland have not stood “shoulder to shoulder” to support police in the region, Jon Boutcher has said.

The PSNI Chief Constable told MPs that some people from a nationalist background who join the force still fear that members of their community will no longer speak to them.

DUP leader Gavin Robinson pushed back on the suggestion that there was a “collective” political problem, pointing out that support for policing from most parties was “unconscious”.

Mr Boutcher was asked about police recruitment when he gave evidence to the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee.

Figures released by the PSNI following their latest recruitment drive showed that the percentage of new Catholic applicants to join the force was at its lowest in more than a decade.

Police said more than 4,000 people had applied for their latest student officer recruitment campaign, with 65.6% from a Protestant background, 26.7% from a Catholic background and 7.7% undetermined.

Mr Boutcher said: “All political parties need to help us far more than they have.”

He pointed out that the Patten Report, which led to the creation of the PSNI in 2001, said all community, religious and political leaders should support the force and stop any discouragement of people joining.

Mr Boutcher said: “They should actively encourage young people to join the PSNI, none of that’s happened.”

Mr Robinson responded: “That’s not right… it is right in part, but I am not going to take any criticism of our support for policing because you know where we stand.”

The Chief Constable said: “It has not happened as collectively as it needs to happen, we need to be shoulder to shoulder on that.”

Mr Boutcher said the force also needed to get better at telling its own story to encourage people to join.

He added: “Not all political parties have come in to support policing in the way that I think the Patten Commission envisaged… in a way that is literally shoulder to shoulder.”

The Chief Constable said he had had a conversation with Peadar Heffron, a former officer whose leg was amputated following a dissident republican bomb attack on his car in 2010 in Co Antrim.

He said: “Paedar told me that when he told his GAA teammates he was going to join the police, a number of them didn’t speak to him.

“He said to me ‘I am not sure it would have changed today’.

“That is not the progress that any of us want.”

“Many people who join the PSNI from a nationalist background fear that some of the community won’t speak to them again.

“I find that hard to understand as a police officer, how that can be, but it is the case.”

Mr Boutcher also addressed calls for a return to a 50-50 recruitment policy, to boost the number of officers from a nationalist background in the force.

He said: “I always say nothing is off the table because I will consider anything.

“But I think if we did what Chris Patten had promoted that we should do in his report in 1999, I would hope we would see the number of applicants from the Catholic/nationalist community increase to 35-40%, proportionally to the representation they have in society.

“That is what we need to do.

“I think 50-50 feels to me a lazy way to do it. We need to do the work to make sure we get the support from society.”

Mr Robinson said it was “important we identify where the problems lie”.

He added: “My support for policing is almost unconscious, people from my community, Ulster Unionists, Alliance too, it is unconscious.

“The SDLP in many ways has shown extraordinary bravery from the creation of the PSNI to the joining of the Policing Board and in the nationalist community, the civic nationalist community, they have stepped up to the plate.”

He added: “I don’t like this notion that it is a collective problem, the consequence is collective, we all suffer the consequence, there isn’t a collective problem.”

The DUP leader said: “Collectively I don’t think you will have any resistance with the majority of political leaders or indeed the majority of people within our community.

“I think we need to be clear about where the problem lies. How do we address it?

“One attendance at an attestation ceremony, one, once in 25 years is a disgrace.”

Mr Boutcher said there needed to be a “quiet conversations” to encourage people to come to a position where “we are all in the same place”.

He added: “I don’t think that happens overnight but I want it to happen in the anniversary year of the PSNI.”

“I am trying to do everything I can this year….to get all the political parties, even those that have been hesitant, to come out as strongly as I want them to, to support what we are doing in policing.

“We need that to be the norm.”