Almost 20 per cent of people in the North feel they have been treated in an unacceptable way by a police officer, according to the first survey of public awareness of procedures for complaints against the RUC, published yesterday.
In the survey, carried out during October and early this month, 1,200 respondents were questioned about their experiences of police behaviour and how they would react to unsatisfactory conduct.
Overall, 19 per cent of interviewees said they had experienced unacceptable behaviour from a police officer, with half of them claiming "incivility".