With public endorsement the new police service will transform Northern Ireland and set itself apart from the RUC. Dan Keenan hears theviews of a former officer on the past, Patten and the PSNI
There is nothing to suggest a long and successful police career in this house. No security, no reminders of the days when discreet cameras monitored callers to the door, no photographs of graduation ceremonies, of uniformed colleagues or of promotion day celebrations. Nothing. Indeed the house is as anonymous as the identity of the former senior officer speaking to me only on condition that he is not identified.
Apart from that, the opinions flow fluently and with little prompting. The outlook is positive, hopeful, cautious and qualified rather than blindly optimistic.
I'm told that Patten was a good thing, the new service is what's needed and if public support across the board is secured then the possibilities are limitless.
"I felt that to move forward the police needed the support of the whole community," he says. "I felt that someone needed to review practices to bring on board the nationalist community. In a general sense I felt that the nationalist community for political reasons weren't falling in behind the police the way they could have done for years and something had to be done to bring them on board and to create this new dispensation for the whole community - for the whole country so that we could all move forward. New policing was a crucial element in that."
He denies that abolition of the RUC to make way for the new service was harsh. "I think people will take the view that they abolished the RUC for their own political, selfish reasons. For example, on the republican side it's probably important to them to say that the RUC was abolished. On the unionist side they will probably see the RUC as being abolished, something taken away from them. In my view you can see it either way depending on your political viewpoint. But I view it as a move forward."
There is a sense of loss at the passing of the old force and its crest - " it was a superb crest because it contained all the elements of our history". But he adds: "If people felt they couldn't align themselves with the police and that move created the circumstances where it was enabling them to do that, I think then it was worthwhile."
He attempts to put the "loss" of the RUC in context. "I think you have to put it in the context of one community feeling that things are being taken away from them which they felt were good things . . . and to a certain extent members of the RUC probably felt the same where, for example you had a massive terrorist campaign, thousands and thousands of bombings, shooting incidents and threats.
"And now when you listen to the political comments from the republican movement they seem to forget these things. It seems to the police on the ground that everything they have done over the part 30 years has been wrong and that everything that Sinn Féin, for example, says is right - there's something absolutely unfair about that. I heard Gerry Adams saying on the TV that they'll have to bring the unionist community along with them and make them feel secure about a united Ireland. But they're not doing that, not in reality." This is a prime reason for the damaged morale among serving officers at the moment, he says.
"The point I made earlier was that everything the police have done has been described as being wrong when in my opinion, and deep in my heart, I feel the vast majority of what they've done was in reaction to an extremely ruthless and cruel campaign by republicans largely - and loyalists as well - and the police did everything they could, and in my view were admired for doing that throughout the world. But politically now, the situation has been manipulated to the extent that it is demoralising." Add to that, the opinion that officers see the force as under-resourced.
He continues: "What I felt that Patten should have done was make the recommendation to increase initially the organisation to about 15,000 or 16,000 people and let's have four or five years of an extremely law-abiding society, let's switch all the resources from the Special Branch activities and public order activities into anti-crime activities, let's get out there and deal with the people who are going to attack isolated farmers or elderly people and let's get into the community on the beat."
This will help build community support, but it does not get over the age-old problem of suspicion and fear getting in the way of explicit support. "I think that if you go back to the old RUC, this is where their strength came in, they were able to cope very well in my view with a community that was frightened to openly support them. People were frightened to come out. I can understand why they were frightened. But this is what the new dispensation needs to being out. We need to bring out community support for this policing service across the board. If the community do that eventually, then the whole thing will have been worth it."
The vociferous and damaging exchanges between the Chief Constable and the Ombudsman over the Omagh bombing investigation have not shaken this officer's belief that the new accountability structures are about right. Can the sharing of authority among the Chief Constable's office, the Ombudsman and the Policing Board produce sound and accountable policing? "Yes, what other way forward is there in reality? We now see one of the most forward-looking, modern organisations in the world in terms of policing."
The new service sees its first trainees graduate tomorrow and will also have a new chief constable. He believes it essential that sufficient officers are put on the ground. But he adds: "The people on the ground can only do so much. The community is crucial. If people don't have the support of the community then they're beating their heads against a wall."
Ronnie Flanagan's successor will have a tough act to follow, he believes, "I thought Ronnie Flanagan on a personal basis was a tremendous Chief Constable". As for the new trainees, the future is theirs to grasp. "I would say to any young recruit - if you can get the public's support and treat the public with the greatest respect, don't be a bit afraid to voice your views but be aware that discipline is necessary in the organisation. Treat people properly, be enthusiastic and it should be the best job in the world."
