Why the peelers can’t win…

Like many people, I wondered why the PSNI stood idly by and watched a few dozen people go on a rampage around the city centre, seemingly attacking people and property at will. Let’s face it: the PSNI are no strangers to riots; if they were on Mastermind, it would be their specialist subject.

In today’s Irish News, Newton Emerson comments that the peelers can’t win. 

Amnesty Northern Ireland has provided a bleakly comic insight into how the PSNI cannot win.

On Monday evening, its director Patrick Corrigan criticised the PSNI for standing back two days previously as racist rioters burned down Muslim-owned businesses in south Belfast.
“Where are the PSNI when we need you?” he posted on X/Twitter, echoing a call by one of the victims.

Yet in June, Amnesty criticised the PSNI for non-lethal public order tactics, denouncing an increase in the use of tasers, attenuated energy projectiles (AEPs) and spit hoods as “deeply disturbing” and vowing to complain to the Policing Board.

The increase was trivial in most cases – the 125 per cent annual rise in AEP discharges, for example, was from four to nine. AEPs are not “plastic bullets”, as Amnesty insists on describing them, while the PSNI’s low-powered tasers are extremely safe. Neither have caused any fatalities in Northern Ireland.

Later on Monday evening, rioting recurred in south Belfast and the PSNI did intervene, firing two AEPs. There was no reaction from Amnesty. Like everyone else, its response to the policing of riots may vary.

Fear of criticism from groups such as Amnesty partly explains the PSNI’s abundance of caution. The human rights architecture that underpins policing in Northern Ireland is a serious business and professionals within it can and do defend reasonable use of force. Nevertheless, the system can browbeat PSNI management into a defensive posture.

PSNI policy on public disturbances is to contain them rather than wading in to stop them. Evidence is collected from a distance and used for follow-up arrests. While this is usually a wise approach, there must be a limit on how much violence officers can sit back and record.

There is an entire industry of organisations here keeping a very close eye on every move the peelers make, and any time they step out of line, they get a flurry of complaints.

There is a bit of mixed messaging going on here. We love it when the peelers are all warm and fuzzy, marching in Pride, respecting the rights of all citizens, committed to diversity and inclusion – all that good PC stuff. But when the far right is on the streets, some people want the RUC back; they want them to wade into them and batter them off the streets.

The peelers can’t win. A policeman’s lot truly is an unhappy one.

I help to manage Slugger by taking care of the site as well as running our live events. My background is in business, marketing and IT. My politics tend towards middle-of-the-road pragmatism, I am not a member of any political party. Oddly for a member of the Slugger team, I am not that interested in daily politics, preferring to write about big ideas in society. When not stuck in front of a screen, I am a parkrun Run Director.