Member's statement: Policing Reform

Member's statement by Mr Jon Burrows on 14 September 2026.

MLA: Mr Jon Burrows
Party at the time: Ulster Unionist Party
Date: 14 September 2026
Type: Member's statement
Business: Members' Statements
Heading: Policing Reform
Assembly identifier: Official Report component 5685274

Text

At the most recent meeting of the Policing Board, the Chief Constable stated that PSNI officers here — men and women who serve us across society — are more likely than those in any other part of the United Kingdom to allow themselves to be assaulted before using force, for fear that they will not be supported if they protect themselves. Those are mothers, fathers, sons and daughters who are being injured because of the scandalous lack of support that they have received. There are a number of reasons why we are where we are. The first is that the Police Ombudsman, as an organisation, has been dysfunctional and punitive. It has subjected good officers to years of investigation. In air-conditioned offices, it has examined young men and women who grapple with violent criminals and make split-second judgements. It judges them for weeks and months instead of dealing with the bad cops. That is why the Ulster Unionist Party is pushing for serious reforms of the Police Ombudsman that would deal with vexatious complainants and the lack of accountability in the Office of the Police Ombudsman. Of course, the Policing Board has failed to spot those trends and cultures. That is why reform is also needed there. A lot of the fault — not exclusively, but largely — lies with the Members opposite, in Sinn Féin. Time after time, they have condemned outright snippets of social media clips of an officer using force.
They were straight on to police commanders — I was one of them — saying, "Suspend him. Suspend him. Throw him out". Time and time again, it was a young officer, sometimes a Catholic officer, who was trying to serve their country.
Of course, at Ormeau Road, Michelle O'Neill herself rang the Chief Constable and Gerry Kelly rang the Deputy Chief Constable, demanding that an officer be suspended. That kind of kangaroo courtism that they operated in the backstreet alleys in the areas where they used to have strongholds through the IRA has been, in many ways, extended to try to get summary punishment for police officers. The media have lapped it up. You have created an environment where officers in this country are worried about protecting themselves and worried about protecting everyone else in case you jump on the bandwagon, in case the ombudsman drags them over the coals and in case the media report them. Wrong —.

402 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Qualifying Sectarianism, hate crime and community relations

Jev’s structured answers met every documented threshold for a qualifying culture-war activity.

Overall probability that the activity is being used to promote, exploit or escalate an identity-based controversy: 0.66 (qualifying needs at least 0.70; at or below 0.30 is not qualifying).
Criteria met: Dog-whistle messaging (0.79).
Assessed as legitimate policy scrutiny (0.65).
The text adopts the identity-based framing in its own voice (0.87).
Subject area: Sectarianism, hate crime and community relations.
The text adopts an antagonistic or dog-whistle framing, which qualifies even alongside legitimate scrutiny.

This is an AI-generated assessment of the text, made against published criteria. It is not a finding of fact about the MLA or their intentions. The Assembly record itself is the fact.

Jev’s structured answers

Probability that each statement is true of this text (0 = no, 1 = yes). A criterion counts as met at 0.60 or above.
Question	Probability	Met?
Identity framing	0.44	No
Sectarian or communal antagonism	0.53	No
Cultural grievance politics	0.04	No
Dog-whistle messaging	0.79	Yes
Controversy escalation	0.35	No
Legitimate policy scrutiny	0.65	Yes
Overall judgement	0.66	Between thresholds

Context and attribution (stance)
Option	Probability
No identity-based framing	0.09
Reports or questions it	0.00
Criticises or condemns it	0.04
Adopts it (chosen)	0.87

Subject area (top five)
Subject	Probability
Sectarianism, hate crime and community relations	0.47
Religion and belief (including people of no religion), churches, faith communities and religious prejudice (including antisemitism and anti-Muslim prejudice)	0.26
Legacy of the Troubles, victims and paramilitarism	0.24
No identity-related subject	0.01
Sexism, misogyny, ageism and other equality groups	0.01

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 16:15 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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