Northern Ireland’s top police officer today stressed he was not in the business of talking up the threat posed by dissident republican terrorists.
Sir Hugh Orde said he was not overstating things by saying the potential for a serious attack was higher than at any time since he joined the PSNI seven years ago.
He was responding to claims from a Sinn Féin member of his oversight body that the capacity of the violent renegades was being overstated in certain circles.
Alex Maskey expressed his concern to the Northern Ireland Policing Board after reports the UK security services have raised the threat level in regard to dissidents from serious to severe.
Dissident groupings opposed to the peace process have been responsible for a series of unsuccessful murder bids on PSNI officers in the last 18 months and in January abandoned a 300lb car bomb near a primary school in the Co Down village of Castlewellan.
Sir Hugh, who would not be drawn on M15’s reported assessment, made it clear he only said things as they were.
“We have said consistently that the threat has increased against police officers,” he said after today’s board meeting.
“We are very clear — they are determined to kill police officers going about their normal duty of keeping people safe.
He added: “I’m not in the business of talking anything up. I say it as I see it, I have consistently done that for nearly seven years.
“Currently, I think the threat is high. My officers are aware of that. But you will not see a step change in style of
policing because our policing style is already commensurate to the threat as we perceive it.” Sir Hugh said the
dissidents would not succeed in dragging Northern Ireland back into darker times.
While he said police officers remained their prime target he warned that they were not concerned about who got killed along the way.
“Fortunately nobody has been killed by a dissident republican attack to date,” he said of the recent incidents.
“We do take them seriously, some officers have been injured, some have been badly injured. We have been lucky to some extent. They will continue to push the edges because they are showing a reckless disregard for anybody’s life.
“You only have to look at Castlewellan - a large bomb abandoned near a school in the middle of nowhere in particular. They were more than happy to leave that and run away regardless of who may have been killed as a consequence.
Mr Maskey acknowledged the chief constable had been consistent and reasoned in his comments on dissidents but he questioned whether other elements of the security forces were attempting to talk up the threat to justify more hardline policing.
The south Belfast representative said reports of MI5 raising the threat level had concerned him.
“For me there is clearly not a lot of substance to that, it’s a play on words and it’s giving fear to the public,” he said. “And I think for a lot of us we suspect that, it is not necessarily your end of it, but somebody’s agenda of slipping back to the bad old ways of reintroducing political policing.”
PA