Debate contribution: Ramming of Police Vehicles: South Armagh

Debate contribution by Mr Mike Nesbitt on 22 April 2024.

MLA

Mr Mike Nesbitt

Party at the time

Ulster Unionist Party

Date

22 April 2024

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Ramming of Police Vehicles: South Armagh

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4484152

Read the official Assembly record

Text

The proposers of the motion and the amendment referred to the south Armagh policing review. From memory, the main recommendation was with regard to Crossmaglen PSNI station. I just note — I do not think that it is a declaration — that I am a former member of the Policing Board and was so at the time of the review's publication. For a bit of context, I think about the places where I have worked in my professional career: Broadcasting House, the BBC's base in Belfast; Havelock House, UTV's base; Windsor House, with the Victims' Commission; and, of course, 13 years here in Parliament Buildings. All were comfortable places to work; in fact, this one — Parliament Buildings — is surely one of the most privileged workplaces in the whole country. I visited Crossmaglen PSNI station some months ago. My goodness, it is like a reverse Tardis. It is a lot smaller inside than it looks from the outside. The corridors are so narrow that you have to turn sideways if you are passing somebody coming the other way. There is no natural light. Until recently, officers went in on a shift pattern that saw them there for four days and three nights, resulting in an annual overtime bill for that one station of £1 million. In the context of the PSNI's hard-pressed budget, that surely was not sustainable and was reflective of a different time. Part of the reform proposed by the south Armagh policing review seemed to me to say to police officers, whom, for most of my adult life, we have asked to police in the most demanding and dangerous of conditions and to often work from police stations that are the exact opposite of the luxury of Parliament Buildings and this estate, that it was time to move on and to give police officers working conditions that are much more appropriate. As Mr Buchanan said, it all seems to go back to Christmas 2019, when the then Chief Constable, Simon Byrne, was photographed outside the police station with four officers, two of whom were carrying the most frightening-looking automatic rifles with huge sights on them. As Mr Buchanan said, it was "a PR disaster". I took the police at face value when they told us on the Policing Board that that was what prompted the review, because senior officers realised, having looked at that photograph and the controversy that surrounded it, "My goodness, we have not really reviewed how we police in south Armagh in the way we should have, given the changing circumstances post-ceasefire". I have a bit of a difficulty with the assertions that what happened was "politically motivated". That said, my party will not support the Sinn Féin amendment, and here is why.

If political interference in policing is going to be talked about, let us remind ourselves of what happened on foot of the terrible incident on the Ormeau Road during COVID, when there was the annual commemoration of those who were brutally murdered at Sean Graham's bookmaker's. On 8 February 2021, Declan Kearney of Sinn Féin, in an article in 'An Phoblacht', made clear that the party's support for the PSNI:

"has been consistent and constructive. But it has also been conditional".

It was also conditional.

Yes.

I thank the Member for his point. I am not entirely clear in my memory of that, but I accept that the DUP has included it in its motion. I am just saying that I take at face value what the police have said about what motivated the desire to bring on what we call the south Armagh policing review. I will conclude by saying that of course we support the motion. Weaponising vehicles to attack police officers is entirely wrong. It seems that the way forward here is for the Policing Board — the main scrutiny body of the PSNI — to take a view about soft-skinned and liveried vehicles. It is my recollection that police use pushbikes in Crossmaglen, which opens them up to certain dangers. We are in a post-ceasefire environment, so is it not great that we have moved away from having a fleet that is exclusively armoured to having soft-skinned and liveried vehicles? It is a more normalised form of transport for policing, but it has attendant dangers. I certainly join, I think, everybody in the House in condemning anybody who rams a police vehicle and puts a police officer at risk. We will support the motion but not the amendment.

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

Assessment

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 10:00 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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