Departing PSNI chief constable Sir Hugh Orde expressed frustration today over the failure to secure convictions for the Omagh bombing and a series of other high profile crimes during his time in charge.
The inability to jail anyone for the 1998 Real IRA attack in Omagh, the £26 million Northern Bank Robbery in 2004, the murder of Belfast man Robert McCartney the following year and the embarrassing break-in at police headquarters in Castlereagh in 2002 have all been cited as blots on the outgoing officer’s copybook.
But while acknowledging that he had made mistakes in his time in office, Sir Hugh said he had no regrets and stressed that overall crime rates had dropped by almost a quarter under his leadership.
He also noted that in regard to the recent dissident republican murders a number of people have been charged and are set to face trial.
“I don’t have regrets, but there are things I would like to have done better,” he said.
“I’d like to have a conclusion to some of the more difficult historic cases that I inherited and some I was here for when they took place. The bank robbery would be one of them, the McCartney murder would be another.
“But when I look at where we are now and some of the high profile murder cases currently under investigation, there will be people going to court on every single one.”
While Sir Hugh was not in charge at the time of the Omagh bomb, which claimed the lives of 29 people including a woman pregnant with twins, the police were tasked to reinvestigate the atrocity during his tenure.
After a marathon trial at Belfast Crown Court, south Armagh electrician Sean Hoey (39) was acquitted in 2007 of the murders and a series of other Real IRA attacks, with the judge accusing police of mishandling vital forensic evidence.
While the chief said he stood by the decision to re-examine the case and defended the detectives involved, he admitted it was unlikely another prosecution could be launched without fresh information coming forward.
“One always gets frustrated when you don’t get what you want to achieve, which is a conviction in criminal cases, it’s what you are paid to do to be honest.
“But there is a process and that process has huge credibility and it’s essential that we comply with the rule of law, ie we do our level best to get the evidence. If it’s not of the standard required that’s game over, that’s absolutely right - I’d rather lose cases for the right reasons than convict people for the wrong reasons.”
With regard to the McCartney murder and the Northern Bank robbery, Sir Hugh said positives had come out of the cases despite the lack of convictions.
“There were some positives that came out of the Northern Bank. One was it was the first time in the history of policing of bank notes being changed (after the robbery the notes were altered to make the stolen money worthless) and those notes have never appeared, anywhere in the world. So this so-called big publicity coup achieved by the Provisional IRA saying ‘we’re still here’, well you might be but you look a bit stupid, you’ve stolen waste paper.
“An Garda Síochána did have some significant success and achieved some convictions (a Cork based business man and his son were found guilty of laundering £3 million from the heist earlier this year) so it wasn’t a completely fruitless operation.
“The McCartney murder I thought was another case where it would have been significant to get a conviction, notwithstanding the commitment of the family and the incredible approach they took to that case which got international interest.
“Out of this case again came significant steps, the condemnation of those sorts of murders, the complete unacceptability of that sort of behaviour by the old world was brought right into the public eye.”
However, Sir Hugh did concede those points were not enough in themselves in the absence of convictions.
“It’s never enough because as a chief you want to solve every single case,” he said.
“But frankly I am as interested or as concerned about the routine cases we don’t solve because it’s our communities we are in charge of protecting.” And in regard to overall crime rates, Sir Hugh said the service has performed well.
“I’ve been judged by many. Others will decide whether policing has moved on or not (during his time in office), but my personal judgment is policing has moved on.
“Crime is down 23 per cent or so during that time overall, our clear-up rate for some of the most serious crimes has increased exponentially — certainly murder — and we are better organised to deliver an effective policing service, and that’s against a very difficult policing background.”
PA