Dissident republicans will not succeed in wrecking Northern Ireland's new community policing boards through a campaign of death threats, PSNI Chief Constable Hugh Orde vowed today.
Mr Orde urged Sinn Féin to speak out against the attacks amid claims the Provisional IRA was involved in the vendetta waged against Catholics who sit on the police boards.
A District Policing Partnership member in Fermanagh has already quit after being warned his life was in danger. A hoax bomb was planted at the home of the Strabane chairman in Co Tyrone.
The Chief Constable confirmed dissident republicans plotting to destroy the peace process and the Belfast Agreement were behind the campaign. But he pledged: "The point the dissidents need to realise is this won't work.
"Violence doesn't work, it never has worked in Northern Ireland and that's why we are where we are today because we have beaten it to a large extent.
"These people [DPP members] are brave people, they have made brave decisions and they're not going to be intimidated out of this."
The threat against representatives on the 26 boards - which hold local police commanders to account - intensified after it emerged police believed the Provisionals were planning to intimidate all nationalist representatives in Cookstown, Co Tyrone.
Sinn Féin has boycotted the bodies because it believes policing reforms have not yet gone far enough.