Police reforms will stand without executive, Patten says in New York

By Patrick Markey

Proposed reforms to Northern Ireland’s police force, the RUC, should proceed even without the establishment of the Good Friday peace agreement power-sharing executive, the chairman of the Independent Commission on Policing said Wednesday.

Talking at a reception for the American Ireland Fund in New York, Chris Patten said while security issues and political developments in Northern Ireland would play a role in how the proposals were received, much of the planned reform should continue.

"I think a huge amount of what we have recommended could happen regardless of either the security situation or what happens to the agreement, because a lot of it should happen anyway," Patten said.

Issues such as police force structure, training and management should be pushed through, he said. Referring to the issue of composition, Patten said the number of Catholic officers in the RUC ranks would have to reach about 15 percent before it had an impact on the community.

Patten, who was in the United States in his capacity of European Commissioner for External Affairs, was scheduled to brief a U.S. congressional hearing on Friday about his commission’s policing report.

The report proposes radical reforms of the RUC, including a change in name, management, composition and methods for dealing with neighborhood relations. Much of the report’s proposals on management and community policing were gleaned from visits to American police departments, including the NYPD.

"In the Good Friday agreement, the parties in Northern Ireland had been able to agree on a very great deal. The one thing they hadn’t been able to agree on was policing, because policing was right at the heart of most of the really sensitive issues," he said.

What the parties had agreed on was a set of terms of reference, and the commission had met those terms absolutely, he said. While the Patten body had often found itself in the position of a truth and reconciliation committee in its 40 public meetings, the report would likely, "stand the test of time," he said.

"We tried to take politics out of policing. We tried to propose policing answers to policing problems," Patten said.

"I think that the worst disservice we could do for police officers in Northern Ireland is to insist that they remain at the center of this political argument."

Irish Senator Maurice Hayes, who was also part of the commission, said the real test for the reforms would be whether the nationalist community would feel comfortable signing up for a new police force.

"If a kid can stand up in a youth club in Ballymurphy and say, ‘ I want to join the police force,’ that is the test. I think we have provided the framework," Hayes said.

The commission has also suggested that implementing the reforms would require an outside force.

"We proposed an oversight commission, somebody from outside the UK and the Republic who, with two or three colleagues, will have the job of coming to Northern Ireland three or four times a year and checking on progress," Patten said.