‘We almost have to be assaulted to be able to defend ourselves’: PSNI reluctant to use force as assaults rise

Retired police officer Jon Burrows remembers the exact spot where he sat in a canteen more than a decade ago and was told that a letter bomb had been sent to him.

It was October 2013 and the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) area commander was eating lunch in the Strand Road police station in Derry when a colleague approached him to say a suspect package with his address had been intercepted in a Royal Mail sorting office.

Even now the former senior officer struggles to talk about the moment he learned the device, sent by dissident republicans, was viable and would have exploded the second he opened the letter.

“It’s very hard to describe, you get almost a numb out-of-body feeling; you actually think someone went to the bother of meticulously trying to kill me. It’s a surreal experience,” Burrows says, his voice breaking.

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“It took a toll on me.”

Figures released by the PSNI this week show a spike in the number of attacks on its staff over the past five years, amounting to about eight a day.

Headbutting, punching, being kicked and hit with flying missiles were among the incidents reported by on-duty PSNI officers. Some 3,272 incidents were recorded for 2022/23, compared with 2,709 for 2018/19.

Assaults causing injury rose by 55 per cent over four years, to 971 injuries recorded last year.

[ Seventeen PSNI officers assaulted in one 24-hour period ]

One officer said she “saw stars” after being headbutted by a man she was escorting into police custody in Newry, Co Down, in December.

Twenty-six years on from the Belfast Agreement that brought an end to the Troubles, why has there been such a significant rise in these incidents during peacetime?

For Burrows, who suffered a broken hand while trying to stop the driver of a stolen motorcycle in England at the beginning of his policing career, a key factor is officers’ fears about misconduct investigations if they use force to defend themselves.

“It used to be the case that you would feel comfortable getting someone aggressive into handcuffs early,” he says.

“But officers have a reluctance now to be decisive because they don’t feel the system empowers them to take prompt and pre-emptive force, which the law allows them to do.

[ Newton Emerson: PSNI has a pattern of appeasing Sinn Féin, but republicans still aren’t happy ]

“Throughout these islands, we feel if we use force pre-emptively, then the Ombudsman will examine it and say: ‘Oh that looks hasty’. We almost have to be assaulted to be able to defend ourselves.”

The issue is not confined to the North, says Burrows, who worked for the Metropolitan Police for five years before moving back to Northern Ireland where he served in the PSNI for 17 years. He retired in 2021.

“You also hear the guards in the South talk about the fear of misconduct, fear of discipline,” he says.

“Accountability and oversight is healthy but officers have been subjected to extremely long and drawn-out investigations after using force. Even if an officer is cleared, it can take years.”

The head of the body representing Northern Ireland’s rank-and-file PSNI officers agrees that a “fear culture” about disciplinary matters is among the reasons for the exponential rise in the number of injuries recorded.

Liam Kelly, chair of the Police Federation for Northern Ireland, has criticised lenient sentences imposed by the courts to those convicted of assaulting officers, resulting in no deterrent against attacks on police.

While welcoming an intervention by the North’s Minister for Justice Naomi Long to reform the law on sentencing, Kelly urged her to move “at pace” as PSNI officer numbers fall amid a recruitment freeze.

“In some instances, officers will wait until they’re assaulted first before reacting. And that can’t be right,” Kelly says.

The high-profile case involving two junior PSNI officers being disciplined for an arrest at a Troubles commemoration event on the Ormeau Road in Belfast three years ago was singled out by the federation for increasing fears among serving police officers. In that case, a High Court judge found the action was unlawful, a ruling that led to the resignation of former PSNI chief constable Simon Byrne.

“Sometimes things do go wrong and we accept that. Sometimes officers overstep the mark and then they need to be disciplined for that,” says Kelly.

“But we have a fear culture in service at the moment where officers expect that if they do anything, they will not be supported by their line management and they will be investigated. So therefore they hang back and as a result of that they end up getting assaulted and worse, and sometimes suffer serious injuries.”

Kelly has worked closely with UK colleagues compiling data on the level of attacks on officers in police forces across England, Scotland and Wales and comparing them with the PSNI.

Among the 150,000 police officers in England and Wales, about 40,000 assaults were reported last year. Scotland, which has about 17,000 officers, recorded 6,000 attacks for the same period.

“The PSNI is sitting at the minute with almost 6,500 officers and 3,772 reported incidents, so even simple maths on that suggest that Northern Ireland is the highest,” says Kelly.

“Nearly 50 per cent of our cadre seem to be impacted by getting assaulted when they’re on duty, which is incredible.

“It’s almost as if being attacked on duty is an accepted occupational hazard now. I think the reality for those frontline officers is that they’re seen as a uniform and not as a person in some of these scenarios. All gloves are off.”

Concerns about the psychological impact of the attacks have been repeatedly raised.

In the aftermath of being targeted with a letter bomb, Burrows says he became “hyper vigilant” about his safety in what was “undoubtedly PTSD”.

“I can remember going back into my house and it was so armoured it felt a bit suffocating; I was working behind armoured glass, I was going to work in an armoured car, I was living behind armoured glass and I felt there was no respite,” he says.

“In Northern Ireland, you still have this unique threat where officers off-duty have to worry. You can never totally switch off.

“I think what we have to remember is about policing here is that you don’t just deal with the threat that’s in front of you at work, you carry it 24/7.”

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