Policing is pictured as a big success of the North’s peace process. The PSNI (Police Service of Northern Ireland) was established in 2001 as a new start for policing. Like the rest of the peace process, reality is less wonderful. At the start there was 50/50 recruitment. Back then just 8% of police were Catholic. Now 32% are. Of those, a small but significant number are from the South. Recently there was a student officer recruitment campaign. Only 27% of applicants were Catholic. Catholics are 47% of the North’s population. Fr Martin Magill is a Parish Priest in West Belfast. He sums the situation up well. “I know more Catholics in Blue Lights, that’s the television series, than I know in the police,” he said. There is definitely some fear of dissident Republican attacks. The Real IRA killed Constable Ronan Kerr two miles from my house, on the other side of Omagh. He was off-duty and a bomb exploded under his car. The dissidents are militarily weak and weakening. Police drive about now in clearly-marked cars. They are easy targets. The dissidents are so weak they can’t even attack easy targets.
