February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
By Jack Holland
President Bush has authorized the restoration of FBI police training for the new Northern Irish police service, the Police Service of Northern Ireland, saying that the force offers a “new beginning to law enforcement in Northern Ireland.”
The president also said that the establishment of PSNI “is a significant milestone in the Northern Ireland peace process and provides additional tangible evidence that the Good Friday agreement is delivering a lasting peace.”
The lavish endorsement coincided with the first major controversy to engulf the new force. On Friday, Dec. 7, the same day as the administration’s certification of PSNI, a draft report severely critical of the police’s handling of the Omagh bombing investigation was leaked to the press.
The report, drawn up by the police Ombudsman Nuala O’Loan, alleges that PSNI’s predecessor the RUC did not act on information it received 11 days before the bombing, which was carried out by the Real IRA and killed 29 people.
Though the report deals with the RUC, it is being used by critics of the new force as proof that the police reforms it embodies did not go far enough and that old RUC practices, especially relating to the Special Branch, persist within PSNI, which is currently made up of former RUC men. But the president’s certification was welcomed by Rep. Ben Gilman, a New York Republican and chairman of the House International Relations Committee.
Sign up to The Irish Echo Newsletter
In a statement, Gilman, who is also co-chair of the Ad Hoc Committee on Irish Affairs, said: “The restoration of FBI police training in the north of Ireland based upon the president’s certification that both the British and Irish governments are fully committed to implementing the vital Patten police reforms is welcome news and has my full and vigorous support. Now that the police board has been formed, new recruits from the nationalist community are in training, the name of the police service changed, and the proposed flag and badge symbols totally neutral, it’s time to get on with the new beginning for policing envisioned by the Good Friday agreement.
“It’s also time to end the politics of policing and make certain that real change comes about for the good people of Northern Ireland, who want to end the appeal of the paramilitaries in some of their neighborhoods through effective community policing.”
Republican Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey, a long-time critic of the RUC, also welcomed the reestablishing of links with the Northern Ireland police and federal agencies of law enforcement.
“There have been new recruits and the beginning of a new policing board,” he said. “Training programs, with significant human rights components, will help as policing struggles to change in Northern Ireland.”
The FBI has been barred from training the Northern Ireland police since November 1999. Congress imposed requirements that until the president could certify that training and exchange programs were necessary to improve the professionalism of the force, that human rights were part of the force’s training curriculum, and that vetting procedures were in place to ensure that no individual would be accepted for training who is suspected of human rights violations, no funds would be made available to federal law enforcement agencies for training Northern Ireland officers. The president’s certification memorandum also stipulates that the exchange programs do not include any member of PSNI if there are “substantial grounds for believing” that he or she “had any role in the murder of Patrick Finucane or Rosemary Nelson or other violence or serious threat of violence against defense attorneys in Northern Ireland.”
The President was also required by congress to provide information of previous training programs involving the RUC. For the first time, the full extent of the link between the RUC, the FBI and the U.S. Secret Service was revealed. It showed that between 1994 and 1999, the federal law enforcement agencies sponsored 16 training programs involving members of the RUC, 13 of which were run by the FBI and three by the U.S. Secret Service. Fifty-three RUC officers attended the sessions, ranging in rank from the chief constable to detective constable. The sessions mainly took place in the FBI’s academy in Quantico, Va., but also took participants to Reykjavik, Iceland (1994), Stockholm, Sweden, (1996), Berlin, Germany (1997), Helsinki, Finland (1998) and Vienna, Austria (1999).
The courses followed included the Joint Leadership Development Program, Counterfeit Currency Detection Training, investigating Credit Card Fraud, and the FBI National Academy Retraining Program.
Last week, a group of members of the new police board, accompanied by several PSNI officers, were in New York on a trip organized by the Mediation Network. They were in the U.S. to look at policing and community relations, and the use of mediation as a tool for reconciliation.
Said Sam Kinkaid, an assistant chief constable who was part of the group: “I welcome these change. The political aspect goes out of policing. We are encouraged by the widening of support for the new force.”
There was mixed reaction among Northern Ireland nationalists. Sinn Fein responded that the ban’s lifting was “disappointing and premature” while acknowledging that it was “entirely a matter for the U.S. government.”
The SDLP’s Alex Attwood, however, said he welcomed the move. “This provides definitive recognition by the U.S. that the Patten Report is being implemented,” he said.