A remarkable look at the future, and failings, of policing in North The Patten report on the Royal Ulster Constabulary is certain to be acclaimed by historians. It presents nothing less than a new beginning for policing
From IRISH TIMES September 10th, 1999
The Patten Commission Report on the Future of Policing in Northern Ireland
is an unusually articulate and elegantly written document by the standard
of official public reports. Besides citing predictable policing authorities
such as Sir Robert Peel, Rowan and Mayne and the Lords Scarman and Denning,
it also finds room to quote Abraham Lincoln, the poet Louis MacNeice and
the Roman poet, Juvenal. More than that, it is an intellectually reasoned
and logically argued convincing manifesto to transform the 77-year-old Royal
Ulster Constabulary from a police force to a renamed and rebranded Northern
Ireland Police Service. But equally, it does not mince its words in estimating
the enormity of the task or the visionary gains to be made. "There is no perfect model for us, no example of a country that, to quote one European police officer, `has yet finalised the total transformation from force to service'. The commitment to a fresh start gives Northern Ireland the opportunity to take best practice from elsewhere and to lead the way in overcoming some of the toughest challenges of modern policing." Little wonder, then, that
at his news conference yesterday morning, Mr Patten, the former Northern
Ireland Minister and last Governor of Hong Kong, the man who pulled down
the flag on the wealthy colony and the man who now proposes to pull down
the Union flag from RUC stations, claimed that this was the most difficult
job he had ever done. However difficult he and his fellow commissioners
may have found it, the report is certain to be acclaimed by historians as
achieving both its aims and its title, circumstances permitting, by articulating
with sympathetic understanding and feasible detail a new beginning for policing
in Northern Ireland. With the uncertainties surrounding the review of the
future implementation of the Belfast Agreement by Senator George Mitchell,
there is the possibility of collapse and the inevitable shelving of much
of the Patten report, as befell that of Lord Hunt in 1969, when its high
ideals were engulfed by violence. However, there remains optimism that even
if the peace process collapses, much of the Patten report can be pressed
ahead with regardless. One of the most remarkable features of the report
is its penetrating analysis of the failure of policing in Northern Ireland
for several generations. "The identification of police and state is contrary to policing practice in the rest of the United Kingdom. It has left the police in an unenviable position. In one political language, they are the custodians of nationhood. In its rhetorical opposite, they are the symbols of oppression. Policing, therefore, goes right to the heart of the sense of security and identity of both communities and, because of the differences between them, this seriously hampers the effectiveness of the police service in Northern Ireland." "Policing cannot be fully effective when the police have to operate from fortified stations in armoured vehicles, and when police officers dare not tell their children what they do for a living for fear of attack from extremists from both sides. We have studied policing in other countries and while we can discover no model that can simply be applied to Northern Ireland, we can find plenty of examples of police services wrestling with the same sort of challenges." Having so succinctly defined the dilemma,
the commission goes on to set authoritative parameters and the baselines
for the way ahead. The most emphatic baseline is to be the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights. The report deplores the fact that in the present RUC training
curriculum, there are only two sections out of 700 dedicated to human rights,
compared to 40 of drill and 63 of firearms training. It goes on to prescribe
that respect and understanding for human rights should be fully integrated
into the ethos of the new police service through training, monitoring, a
new code of ethics, the appointment of a specialised legal adviser and the
incorporation of an undertaking to respect and uphold human rights into
the oath of office to be taken by all officers in the police service. One
of the most important tasks the report fulfils is to grapple with and suggest
a specific solution to the central question of delineating the limits of
responsibility between the suggested new oversight body, the Northern Ireland
Policing Board (to replace the existing Police Authority) and the Chief
Constable. |
