February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
The question wasn’t posed, but if it was asked, O’Loan could probably rattle off the precise number of days until her term of office expires on that same date in 2007.
She’s precise in that way.
O’Loan was in New York and Washington last week on a visit that could fairly be described as whirlwind. Her visit — on the eve of what is expected to be a highly controversial inquiry into the 1999 car bomb murder of lawyer Rosemary Nelson — was dominated by meetings with Irish American lobbyists, political leaders and Brehon Law Society members who will be taking a particularly keen interest in the progress of the Nelson inquiry.
“I’m an independent, impartial investigator. That’s the beginning and the end of it,” O’Loan said in an interview in New York shortly before addressing a forum on policing jointly organized by the Brehon Council and New York Law School.
O’Loan runs an office that has a staff of 128, including 90 investigators who deal with complaints and allegations against the Police Service of Northern Ireland.
Since her office was established in 2000, O’Loan and her staff have dealt with 14,254 complaints against the police and 19,414 more serious allegations.
“We investigate the police from incivility up to murder,” O’Loan said. “There’s nothing like our office in the U.S., or indeed in the world.”
The most serious category of allegation against police officers comes under the broad title of “oppressive behavior.”
According to O’Loan, this category includes murder, but is most often likely to cover incidents such as a gun being drawn by an officer, or an officer using a baton.
Complaints like these were 40 times more likely to arise in Northern Ireland than in England or Wales. The reason for this is not too deep a mystery given the conflict in Northern Ireland over the years. But O’Loan also blames the high number on a lack of conflict-resolution training in the police force in former years. That absence in the police training procedure, she indicated, was a thing of the past.
“There has been a huge change in police behavior,” she said.
At the same time, O’Loan believes that the fact that people in Northern Ireland now feel that they can complain against the police, and that such complaints will be taken seriously, is a positive development.
“People complaining is a healthy sign,” she said. “It means they are become more involved in their society.”
Such complaints have resulted in 29 prosecutions against police officers between 2001 and 2005, while on 81 occasions O’Loan’s office has recommended internal disciplinary proceedings to the PSNI chief constable.
O’Loan has won praise from all political quarters. Not surprisingly, she has also been the target of criticism.
Early in her term of office she clashed publicly with the then chief constable of the PSNI, Ronnie Flanagan, over the police investigation of the 1998 Omagh bombing. Flanagan ended up resigning.
At the same time, O’Loan has supported the controversial use of plastic bullets by a police force that now numbers 9,500 members, down from a Troubles high of over 13,000.
Though she eschews questions that she feels fall into the realm of the purely political, O’Loan is quick to play up changes in the way that police officers in Northern Ireland are now trained for a force that has long been dogged by charges of political partisanship.
“Recruits are now taken in from the community on a 50-50 basis. They are very bright and many are college graduates,” she said. “I regularly talk to them about ethics and the need to adhere to a code of conduct.”
A lawyer by training, O’Loan was seen at the outset of her term as being from the North’s establishment.
Over time, however, she has demonstrated a consistent ability to forge an independent path.
As a result, Sinn F