The recommendations of the police reform commission headed by Patten were leaked Wednesday, a day prior to their formal release

September 8, 1999
Web posted at: 8:36 p.m. EDT (0036 GMT)

BELFAST, Northern Ireland (AP) -- A long-awaited plan to reform Northern Ireland's predominantly Protestant police force, widely leaked Wednesday, only served to underscore the region's bitter divisions. It proposes too much change, too quickly, for many Protestants, and too little, too slowly, for many Catholics.

Key points among the approximately 175 recommendations in the report, which was produced as part of the 1998 Good Friday accord: The police force, called the Royal Ulster Constabulary, should change its name to the more neutral Northern Ireland Police Service, and it should lose its symbol of a British crown atop an Irish harp.

"Who wants all these changes to our police? The terrorists," said Pearl Graham, whose policeman son was shot in the back of the head by members of the Irish Republican Army in June 1997. "The Royal Ulster Constabulary -- my boy has that written on his headstone," she said.

But Gerry Adams, leader of the IRA-allied Sinn Fein party, warned he would face growing unrest among his supporters if the police reform commission, led by Britain's former Hong Kong Gov. Chris Patten, "does not produce a new policing service."

"The RUC must go," Adams said, condemning the force as "one of the most ruthless, repressive and unaccountable state machines existing anywhere in the world."

Ever since Northern Ireland's conflict ignited 30 years ago, when police violently suppressed Catholic civil rights marches, many Catholics have never accepted the Royal Ulster Constabulary. The IRA's relentless attacks on police in turn ensured that police could enter the most hard-line Catholic neighborhoods only with armored cars, flak jackets, submachine guns and a British army escort.

The centerpiece of the Good Friday peace accord -- a four-party Cabinet shared equally between the province's British Protestants and Irish Catholics -- has been repeatedly delayed. The major Protestant party, the Ulster Unionists, refuses to accept Sinn Fein into two of the Cabinet posts until the Irish Republican Army agrees to disarm, which the outlawed IRA insists it won't do.

The 128-page police reform report, to be released Thursday, will likely receive full backing from the British government. Commission members spent several months canvassing opinions from often exclusively British Protestant or Irish Catholic audiences in community halls across Northern Ireland.

Adams warned that the commission must produce a new policing service in Northern Ireland

The RUC's commander, Chief Constable Ronnie Flanagan, received the report Wednesday. In a confidential letter to senior officers urging them to remain calm, he said the report would "undoubtedly mark a milestone, not only for policing in Northern Ireland, but perhaps also for the development of society here."

The report also proposes gradually trimming Flanagan's force from its present 13,000 members -- 92 percent of them Protestant -- to 7,500, while simultaneously creating a new civilian recruitment agency that would specifically target Catholics.

"The public owe a great debt of gratitude to the police service here," said Paul Slane, who lost both legs in a 1992 IRA rocket attack that killed a colleague. Another 7,500 officers have been wounded -- several hundred of whom bear permanent physical and mental disabilities -- as part of the IRA's effort to destroy Northern Ireland as a Protestant-majority state.

Although the recommendations strive to build greater Catholic willingness to support and participate in a rebranded police force, they fall well short of the demands of the IRA and Sinn Fein.

Jim McCabe, whose wife died after police shot her with a plastic bullet in Catholic west Belfast in 1981, said the RUC "investigated themselves and exonerated themselves, even though Nora was struck in the back of the head from a distance of no more than 10 feet."

No police officer, McCabe noted, "has ever been convicted of any of these politically motivated murders. As far as I can tell, Patten's report doesn't even address this fact. The RUC men responsible for killing my wife are still in the ranks. Their commander even got a promotion and an honor from the queen."

Copyright 1999   The Associated Press. All rights reserved.