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Showing posts with label PSNI intimidation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label PSNI intimidation. Show all posts
Anthony McIntyre ☠  A former republican prisoner who has been the target of an intense campaign of harassment by the PSNI is pursuing legal action against the force. 

As part of a prolonged PSNI vendetta against the man the force falsely accused him in 2020 of being in possession of 81 indecent images, some of which were categorised as 'A' - those considered most depraved.  The allegation was withdrawn after 24 hours and unconvincingly explained away as a computer error by the PSNI.


A complaint was upheld by the Police Ombudsman regarding this incident and the officer in question was removed from duties and given further training . . .  This was an extremely distressing ordeal for our client to go through, not only for himself, but for his wife and young family. He attended several counselling services in the years following to help him cope with the trauma. To date, the police have not issued our client with an apology and legal proceedings are ongoing.

The father of one has claimed that from he reached the age of sixteen he has been in the sights of the PSNI, keen to monitor his republican activism. So unrelenting has the harassment been, resulting in the egregiously false accusation, that the former prisoner said he has been rendered traumatised, leading to suicidal ideation. Had this young man ended his own life on receipt of the allegation against him, PSNI perfidy would have been covered up and the smear that he took a coward's way out rather than face accountability for his actions allowed to prevail, even though he was guilty of nothing.

The extent of the harassment can be gleaned from a Sunday World report:

He and his wife have been repeatedly arrested, held for days, and had social services referred to their house a number of times by the PSNI. They have catalogued every time police officers called to their home.
In total, since 2013, he said he has been stopped and searched at least 89 times. 

His home has been the target of many PSNI raids. When not searching his abode the cops would frequently drive up to it and and shine lights into it, causing distress to his family and discomfort to his  neighbours.

As it transpires the inaptly named PSNI Intelligence Unit now acknowledges that he is no longer a person of interest. 

In a month week that saw the PSNI take extra large egg to its face as a result of its failed ten year legal pursuit, and ultimately collapsed prosecution, of three republican activists, the force has yet again demonstrated that the PSNI apple did not fall far from the RUC tree which bore it. During that trial the force's dissembling, bamboozling and manipulation of evidence led to the case it sought to present being thrown out. A waste of a decade, not to mention the draining effect on the public purse. 

While the man's solicitor has described the latest allegations as a 'catastrophic error', the PSNI's victim suggests that while catastrophic it was not an error but deliberate and vindictive. Speaking to TPQ he said:

I believe the PSNI did not make a mistake and this was a deliberate attempt to warn me as to what they were capable of doing in order to deter me for constantly challenging them whether it be during stop and searches, arrests, while they were sitting outside my house at all hours etc. I was lodging numerous complaints with PONI and other legal bodies and NGOs in an attempt to hold them to account, supplying evidence of harassment and misconduct. The PSNI were also aware of my personal battles with my mental health and I often wonder if this was a way to try and send me over the edge and get me to end my own life (as it is harder for them in this day and age to get away with actually killing people themselves). I intend to take this case against the PSNI all the way for what they did to me and my family. I still suffer today from the effects this has had on me. My son at the time was 5 weeks old and they’ve taken away my joy of being a new father. I will never get this time back.

His wife added that there was no genuine sense of regret on the part of the PSNI in the wake of acknowledging it had got things all so wrong:

Seeing is believing. If I hadn’t lived with my husband for the past 8 years and he told me what the PSNI had done to him, I would be thinking “this guy has lost his mind or he must be paranoid!” Sadly, I have witnessed and been the victim of the PSNI and other British state agencies’ insidious tactics. I thought that the constant stop and searches, antagonising and harassing of my husband was bad enough but when they pulled that stunt with the images, it didn’t look just petty anymore. In fact, I took it as a personal attack on my family because, at this point, they didn’t care about the impact this would have on us. The day after we were told that they had made a “mistake”, an unmarked police car drove up to our street, the two occupants put their window down, put Covid masks on and shouted “Ha! Ha! Ha!” three times all over our street. I couldn’t believe it! If someone told me that, I’d think they’re full of it but when you see it with your own eyes, it’s staggering!

Dealing with the matter by granting an individual cop a fool's pardon, does not remotely address the  systemic vindictiveness that courses through the PSNI veins. The Jeffrey Donaldson sage in recent days has demonstrated the depth of hostility that accusations of paedophilia can engender. Even when not yet proven, the accused can plummet from hero to zero in a heartbeat. A community or family can turn on a person in an instant, leaving them friendless, marginalised and isolated. The trauma that this former republican prisoner and his family was forced to endure is unimaginable, and then to be given the ha ha ha treatment and still no apology four years on.

Despicable and disgraceful are two words which leap to mind when characterising the PSNI behaviour. It is being called to account not by the toothless Policing Board which did nothing other than sing The Sound Of Silence, but by the man, his wife and their solicitor, with little help from other bodies. Their lonely struggle is underscored by the lack of assistance from agencies appealed to. 

I personally have raised it with International Red Cross, CAJ, Amnesty international, MOJO, SDLP, PBP, Saoradh, RNU, 32 CSM, IRSP, Provisional Sinn Fein, Human Rights Commission, Equality Commission. Most above refused to provide any assistance or condemnation.

The man at the centre of this PSNI vendetta, while having emerged the other side battered and bruised, remains on the ground rather than in it. Others might not be so fortunate, finding the burden of trauma occasioned by vindictiveness too weighty to carry. By highlighting their experience the former republican prison and his supportive wife hope to shine the spotlight, so often shone into their own home, deep into the recesses of PSNI perfidy.

⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.


Vendetta

Jarlath Toner ✒ reflects on the disruptive and intrusive presence of PSNI philistines at Jim Daly’s Funeral

The PSNI performed the same social function at Jim Daly’s funeral as joyriders do on a quiet Christmas morning.


Creating juvenile noise and an obnoxious overt public awareness of their presence as good people went around their business of trying to live a decent life. 

Anybody with even a basic knowledge of the late Professor Jim Daly, his personal values and characteristics could have told you that the chances of a ‘paramilitary’ display at his funeral were nil.

Described at his requiem service by Rev Thomas McGlynn as “modest, humble, shy and self-effacing”, both the IRSP and Jim’s family and friends were very aware that any overt display to mark his passing would have been grossly out of character with Jim’s own personal aesthetic and temperament.

The 84-year-old husband and comrade of fellow academic and fallen IRSP chairperson Miriam Daly, Jim was buried on Saturday afternoon from the home which they shared with their children in Andersonstown in West Belfast. The same home in which terrorists aligned to Margaret Thatcher murdered Miriam, imposing a lifetime of trauma upon them all on June 26th, 1980. His wake was, in fact, the first occasion since on which the front door of the house had been left open for any reason.

As was agreed between the IRSP and Daly family in the days before his funeral, Republican Socialism was represented, but only alongside (and on an equal footing with) the many other rich cultural aspects of his life. A life well lived.

Jim’s obvious love of higher learning and philosophy, of the Irish language and music, of world history and - most notably - of traditional (Pre Vatican II) Catholic theology and practice were all interwoven into an immensely thought provoking and dignified service which was attended by Queen’s University staff and Alumni, members of the Irish language community, and contemporary local artists and musicians alike. An exceptionally dignified and distinguished gathering for a Saturday afternoon in Andersonstown.

Prior to the short walk to mass however, a deliberately small and discreet honour guard, made up of older and younger IRSP members, dressed in civilian white shirts and respectful black ties accompanied the procession to the church; placing a single blue starry plough flag on the coffin just outside the door of the family home before proceeding onwards to St Agnes’ Church.

It was at this point that mourners - the vast majority of them non-political and certainly not in the IRSP - were confronted with the arrival and presence of completely uncalled for and unwelcome armored PSNI jeeps outside the Daly home. One land rover was adorned with a roof mounted tripod and camera, which pointed and turned intrusively at any and all in attendance, before driving up and down the road gathering similar intelligence on new arrivals, where and when they could.

 
IRSP activists, used to such bog ignorant antics, yet aware that this was a family funeral and not a political event, would not add to any unfolding drama by brazenly taking photographs or capturing footage of armored police surveillance jeeps. Instead, they went about their own discreet task and hoped that the unwelcome intrusion would soon simply pass.

Any such hope of normality diminished however upon the arrival of a loud low flying PSNI helicopter, that also hovered and remained over the attendees for the duration of the entire funeral.

It was inevitably mentioned amongst some gathered, that had Police been as interested in comings and goings from the Daly home on the occasion of Miriam’s murder in 1980, the procession would most likely have been led by Jim’s widow herself.

A short while later during the funeral mass in St Agnes’ chapel, the work of three Philosophers; (Plato, Thomas Aquinas and Karl Marx) provided the center piece for the homily; provided as it was by Andersonstown priest the Reverend Thomas McGlynn.

Reverend McGlynn had been a former Queen’s University pupil of Jim’s, in the old Scholastic Philosophy department now long since disbanded; victim to the many cutbacks which have been inflicted upon University Arts departments in recent decades. Another legacy of Margaret Thatcher.

And he did a grand job of explaining the intellectual link between his old teacher’s trad Catholic spirituality and his worldly political activism in conflict riven Ireland during the period now known as ‘the troubles’. No easy verbal task on the best of days.

Above the roof of the church as he spoke, the PSNI helicopter hovered and circled, while out on the street the PSNI jeeps and newly arrived unmarked cars drove past, stopped, and stared in at those standing outside the church.

In an attempt to further wind up what the PSNI clearly and stupidly thought was “an Irp funeral”, uniformed cops in High Visibility jackets took the opportunity to walk past and glare in at RSYM (Republican Socialist Youth Movement) members who were waiting in the church car park in their ‘blacks and whites’. The young lads wise to their antics refused to let them sully a solemn event and moved to stand in the side chapel doorway out of sight.

Meanwhile inside, as was Reverend McGlynn’s right given the settings we were in, the priest placed a specific emphasis on Jim’s personal preference for the old pre-Vatican II Catholic rites and traditions, including his insistence on celebrating the feast days of saints as per the old church calendar and his particular fondness for the sacred lyrics of Saint Thomas Aquinas and their subsequent interpretation into Gregorian chant.


Where today, it is popular for some families to choose a well-known pop song at a funeral to mark their loved one’s life and passing. Jim Daly’s chosen funeral song was the medieval Gregorian chant known as the Tantum Ergo, the last two paragraphs of a wider epic hymn Pange Lingua, thought to be penned by Saint Thomas Aquinas himself as a musical means to honour and worship the physical presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

As it happened, I had Tantum Ergo as a ringtone on my phone for most of last year and so knew the words and melody quite well, allowing me to sing along with the handful of others who took up Reverend McGlynn’s request for anyone who knew to hymn to sing it with him.

Upon leaving the church I met the young IRSP lads in the doorway who explained to me their reasoning for getting away from the PSNI. Credit should be given to them for having respect for the occasion and for the sanctity of the church where the PSNI quite clearly had none.

At the gates of Milltown cemetery, as mourners filed in for Jim’s burial, the PSNI jeeps and cars had re-appeared just across the road. Previous funerals stewarded by the IRSP had taught that while officers inside the jeeps gather footage, the unmarked cars are present for the purpose of pursuing and stopping mourners as they leave.

At the bottom of Milltown cemetery where Jim Daly would be buried, those attending began to struggle to hear the decade of the Rosary being recited by Reverend McGlyn, as the PSNI helicopter had made a re-appearance. Again, circling above in what genuinely appeared to be an exercise in malevolent disruption as opposed to a maneuver designed to further any intelligence gathering.

Not that there was in truth, any need to gather intelligence on such an unassuming and innocent event as the funeral for an 84-year-old widower, a quiet and dignified victim of the Irish conflict.

Reverend McGlynn concluded the graveside ceremony by singing the Salve Regina. Again a Latin hymn which directly evokes and appeals to the Virgin Mary; asking her in lyrical form to intercede with Jesus for we “the banished children of Eve’ here on earth, beautifully described in the song as ‘in hac lacrimarum valle’ translated as “in this valley of tears”.

By this stage however, the PSNI helicopter was performing the aeriel equivalent of donuts above us, ensuring that only those near the grave could hear what was going on at all. A fellow mourner standing beside me and who had studied Latin for three years, announced that he did not know what the priest was singing due to the sound of the rotor blades.

Myself, being both a Republican and a Queen’s graduate, as well as having a particular fondness for the Salve Regina; a hymn which I also took the time to learn - having heard my mother speak about learning it as a child - I was genuinely thrilled at the thought of hearing a priest sing it at the graveside of Jim Daly.

Upon moving closer to hear the concluding verse however, I was simply seething with frustration at the ongoing and persistent obnoxious noise of the PSNI helicopter, which was now blatantly interfering with the proceedings below. In what of course was a family funeral, but also an occasion of real cultural, political, and academic significance.

The words of TD Richard Boyd Barret (when speaking of plans to abolish Dublin’s Moore Street) seemed fitting when I assessed the situation. “Philistines, utter Philistines” seemed to sum up the attitude of Police to the event that they had just witnessed and which they clearly had zero insight into. The height of culture had been met with the height of ignorance.

I only met Jim Daly once, on the occasion of the IRSPs unveiling of a new mural to his wife Miriam in Beechmount in 2016.

On that occasion while chatting casually to the organisers before the ceremony, Jim spoke philosophically on his belief that “England’s ignorance of the Gael is surpassed only by its fear of the Gael”.

The PSNI’s antics at his funeral proved Jim Daly (as on many occasions) to have been correct.


Jim Daly (1937-2021) Ora pro nobis!

⏩ Jarlath Toner is a West Belfast republican

The Height Of Culture Meets The Height Of Ignorance

Packy Carty, through the prism of the PSNI, takes a dim view of reformist political strategies based on a long march through the institutions of the state, feeling that they can only end in failure. 

In 1967 Rudi Dutschke the German left-wing student intellectual formulated the "long march through the institutions" theory, which suggested revolutionaries could take professional and state professions and change the capitalist system from within. Dutscke’s theory failed to countenance the opposite outcome, as former revolutionaries more often than not would be shaped by the system, strengthening rather than overcoming the institutions they opposed.

Nationalists in the North of Ireland have engaged in their own march through the institutions following the Belfast Agreement 23 years ago, though with the less than lofty aspiration of getting their share of the crumbs from the table of imperialism. Nowhere has this engagement been more controversial than the acceptance and support of the repackaged RUC as the PSNI.

The main constitutional forces of nationalism; Sinn Fein and the SDLP, have for over a decade given almost uncritical support to the PSNI which was forged from a force that was to all intents and purposes a colonial, counterinsurgency sectarian militia, almost exclusively drawn from the unionist population. This nationalist support has increased Catholic representation in the PSNI to 30%, members largely from the new nationalist middle-class ascendancy.

This significant minority has been happy to engage fully in the role as the first line of defence for British interests in Ireland and as such is still viewed with suspicion and open hostility in working-class Republican districts. The fallout from the Ormeau bookmakers’ massacre commemoration this week has gone to the heart of nationalism's unconditional support for the PSNI. The all too familiar sectarian approach to policing, that was standard practice in the 1990s, is now no longer acceptable to a nationalist bourgeois that has invested heavily in state institutions like the PSNI and in a week where Loyalists seemed to march around Belfast unimpeded. The arrest of Mark Sykes, a survivor of a sectarian murder gang whilst laying flowers was the hook on which ‘civic’ nationalism hung its hat to protest and protect its material interests.

Nationalist Crown Force personnel are quite happy to engage in class oppression of working-class Catholics and Protestants, they are however averse to toeing the line when the PSNI's RUC leadership pursue a unionist agenda, The Irish News reported “seismic discontent” among nationalist PSNI personnel over the Sean Graham massacre memorial blunder, devoting much ink over several days to the crisis. But far worse has happened in recent years in policing without eliciting the wrath of the nationalist bourgeois. Is it a coincidence this wrath comes hot on the heels of the DUP's departmental interference in border and customs arrangements post Brexit? 

As in broader society, there are now two divergent national interests within the PSNI. British Chief Constable Simon Byrne moved quickly to try and appease nationalist sentiment by apologising and suspending the personnel responsible for the Ormeau debacle, indicating the gravity of the crisis of confidence the PSNI is currently facing among nationalists.

Meanwhile, nationalism is on the rise, Brexit has brought economic unity with Dublin and the EU, creating a sea border with Britain. Many expect the 2021 census to confirm a Catholic majority in the North. Talk of a border poll in the near future is rife. And while the DUP attempt to find a way out of a Brexit disaster they helped fashion, nationalism is attempting to exert its influence on institutions traditionally hostile to its cause. 

Unfortunately for nationalism these institutions serve only the British.

In solidarity.

⏩ Packy Carty is an East Tyrone Socialist Republican. 

Futility Of A Long March Through The Institutions

Matt Treacy ✒ Amidst all of the touchy-feely mainstream news media tributes to the different branches of the public service in this Time of the Virus, it would seem that some find it difficult to abandon old ways.


While the Gardaí have attracted mixed reviews for their Dancing Against the Pandemic – as opposed to their removing people from the vicinity of beaches and graveyards – their colleagues on the Police Service of Northern Ireland have been rather more retro.


On February 2, 1992 five Catholic men were shot dead at a Sean Graham bookmakers office on the Lower Ormeau Road in South Belfast. The plaque commemorating them on Hatfield Street states that they were “murdered for their faith.” That they were Catholics was the sole criterion their assassins required to be fulfilled.

The attack came at a particularly awful period in the armed conflict and the seeming degeneration of it into escalating and pointless slaughter was undoubtedly a key factor in bringing about the ceasefires two years later. Whatever about the settlement that followed, stopping the conflict was the correct thing to do.

The fact that loyalists insisted for several years on parading past the scene, and taunting of local people about the murders, is an enduring legacy of that time. Since the ceasefires the annual commemoration organised by relatives of the murdered men has been conducted with dignity and with peace.

Until last Friday that is. Despite the statement by the Lower Ormeau Residents Group that the families of those who were killed had come to an arrangement with the PSNI regarding how the event might take place given the current restrictions due to Covid, members of the police force appeared to have taken a different view.

The families said that on the anniversary of the killings each year they gathered “in dignity to remember their loved ones and to say a short prayer.” They added that “this year because of Covid restrictions it was restricted to the five families, who maintained a dignified silence and left flowers down.”

They said that the police “attended, approached victims and survivors of an atrocity and commenced to harass, push and assault man, woman and child.”

Whether it was sanctioned or not, several members of the force can be seen on video engaged in needlessly aggressive behaviour. Or at least you could have seen that until Facebook decided that the content was not suitable for viewing and took the some of the videos down.

One of the things that can be seen on the videos that remain up is the deliberate targeting of Mark Sykes, who was pursued by one particular officer and then arrested, apparently for “disorderly conduct,” There would not seem to be much evidence of that on film. Sykes was himself wounded in the attack on the bookmakers in1992. His arrest, at a commemoration, has caused considerable distress and upset.

Not surprisingly the incident and the arrest provoked an angry response, and the Sinn Féin Deputy First Minister demanded a meeting with the Chief Constable Simon Byrne. Byrne’s response was to point to the “concerns about the enforcement of conronavirus regulations.”

Strangely, as with the double standards applied this side of the border, the PSNI seemed to have no issue with a UVF party which took part in the intimidation of east Belfast people from their homes days prior to that.

That there may be more to all of this than random cops losing their head, would appear to be supported by another incident last week. That took place when the home of 85-year-old Rita McKernan in Turf Lodge was surrounded by police officers as her body was waked. The funeral cortege was also harassed as it made its way to Milltown Cemetery on the Falls Road.

The McKernan family are well known to be associated with the Irish Republican Socialist Party, and the policing of this and other funerals, as well as what took place on the Ormeau Road have led some to question what exact influence Sinn Féin has as part of the Stormont Executive to which the PSNI is supposedly accountable.

With tensions rising in the midst of the fallout from Brexit and the inept handling by the EU Commission of its own “understandings”, the PSNI certainly ought not to be perceived as contributing to all of that. Even if it is a case that some people given the authority of the state are in their element now with the myriad excuses to push people about, even at sensitive times like funerals and commemorations of murder victims.

Armed, as it happened in the case of the UDA who carried out the Ormeau Road attack, by agents of the state. 



Matt Treacy has published a number of books including histories of 
the Republican Movement and of the Communist Party of Ireland. 

PSNI’s Disorderly Harassment Of Commemoration Is Unacceptable

Anthony McIntyre ruminates on the display of hostility towards Lower Ormeau Road nationalists commemorating the dead from a loyalist massacre that took place almost thirty years ago. 


29 years to the day from the UDA slaying of five men and boys at the Sean Graham Bookmaker premises on the Lower Ormeau Road, the betting shop was again in the news, this time because of another attack by hostile aggressors.

On this occasion thug life came in the official uniform of the British state PSNI rather than in the attire of the loyalist UDA, the relatives of dead and survivors of the massacre firmly in their sights. Niall Murphy, a Belfast solicitor, commented that:

The police attended for what reason I will never know, approached victims and survivors of an atrocity and commenced to harass push and assault man, woman and child.

The PSNI was not remotely interested in keeping the peace but in disturbing it. Even if the force suspected some breach of the law or Covid-19 guidelines it could easily have drawn on precedent and not intervened, opting to wait until emotions had passed before beginning intrusive investigations. 

Perhaps most infuriating of all was the manhandling and arrest of local man and massacre survivor, Mark Sykes. Shot seven times by the UDA, he had attended last week's small commemoration to lay flowers and pay homage to those who had lost their lives, including his brother in law Peter Magee. He had hardly arrived before being confronted with sectarian animosity and an urge to domineer. Mr Sykes described his ordeal: 

The only thing I had in my hands was flowers that my 3 year old grand daughter had lain at her uncle’s memorial. When I asked police what they were doing and had they notebooks out at Pitt Park, I was told if I swore again I would be arrested. I said this is a fucking disgrace as I walked away. The police then grabbed me and handcuffed me. The cuffs were as tight as possible, behind my back. The handcuffs were dug in tightly to the bullet wounds I suffered 29 years ago to the day. On top of the insult of donating the weapon to shoot me to a museum they have today literally rubbed the steel of their handcuffs as salt in my physical wounds.

Can there be a more damning and vivid indictment? 

Although not remotely comparable with the scale and viciousness of the 1992 attack, lurking behind the action was a similar sentiment – sectarianism: one community is considered a child of a lesser god.

The PSNI was recently described as institutionally racist by one of its serving officers. A stronger argument can be made that since its formation, and in the century since, it has been institutionally sectarian.

It is not persuasive enough to explain the Ormeau Road assault as a case of Trevor and Mervyn (Ciaran added for good effect optics) seizing the opportunity to vent their bigotry. It may well be that the PSNI officers involved were not attitudinally sectarian. This is besides the point as institutional sectarianism, much like institutional racism, is not reducible to attitudes. Institutional sectarianism is is to be found in the historical pattern of the structural relationship between the state's police and the nationalist community when compared against the relationship between the same state police and the unionist community. As Andy George, president of the National Black Police Association (NBPA), and a serving officer with the PSNI, explained:

Institutional racism doesn't mean that every single officer and staff member is racist ... It's more about the fact that, over time, systems and processes within policing have worked to the detriment of ethnic minority communities.

Same for institutional sectarianism: which is why Mark Thompson of Relatives For Justice is found making a damning assessment in calling for:

a major rethink on policing ... a Patton style commission mark two. On paper it looks fine in terms of accountability but in reality none of it works.

This is most salient against a contextual background of the PSNI taking absolutely no action other than to stand idly by when an aggressive mob of masked loyalists stomped their way through an East Belfast housing estate last week. With the PSNI wearing masks as well, the one difference a cynic might flag up is that of loyalists in uniform and loyalists not in uniform. There was certainly none of the hostility or aggression that was on display in the Lower Ormeau.

The event being commemorated by those subjected to PSNI assault is something I recall quite well. That very morning a resident from the area, a life-long friend, Tommy McReynolds, had visited me in Long Kesh. When news came through, my first thoughts were for his safety. He had left the prison early enough to have made it back to the Lower Ormeau prior to the killers striking. As it transpired he was safe but another person who had visited me previously wasn’t. Young Peter Magee was cut down. I hadn’t met him prior to the visit, on which he had accompanied his uncle, Willie Magee, out of curiosity I guess. In addition to many of the injured I also had known Willie McManus and Christy Doherty, both of whom died. In a community so small, and in which I had grown up, familiarity with some of the victims was always a certainty. I ended up writing a piece about the massacre for An Phoblacht Republican News which was published.

Since then, the families of the dead and the survivors have always been subjected to a state strategy of deception. The RUC under both its old and new name colluded in not just the massacre but the cover up as well. Information has been willfully held back, with the dog ate my homework-type excuses being proffered.  This week's aggression was symptomatic of a particular and deeply ingrained mindset towards Northern nationalists.

Sinn Fein's Gerry Kelly fulminated:

it beggars belief that police have acted in such a heavy handed way with victims of loyalist violence in a week where the PSNI didn't as much as take a name or stop a single member of an East Belfast UVF criminal gang of more than 50 men whose intent was to violently intimidate people out of their homes.

It seems to have escaped Kelly that he might have inadvertently given the PSNI the green light with his call for a "full investigation" into the funeral of former republican prisoner, Eamon "Peggy" McCourt in Derry.

And while it might beggar belief for Kelly, others have been scathingly saying much the same since the RUC was renamed in 2001. A republican, long at odds with Sinn Fein's support for the PSNI, today on social media articulated a sentiment which sounds far less off the wall than it might have done 13 years ago when Sinn Fein support for the British police was something of a novelty:

I hate to be the one to say I told you so. For years I and others have experienced old style RUC policing by the new style PSNI. I described how my home was raided, property seized, children upset, and much more. Most of it fell on deaf ears or was ignored as the rantings of a trouble maker. Even my neighbours remained indoors as my family were persecuted. People can answer for themselves. 
Now a number of recent situations involving the police has produced an avalanche of criticism, and rightly so. The arrest of Mark Sykes on the Ormeau Road yesterday caused public outrage in nationalist communities forcing an apology from the RUC-PSNI today. Another video showing the police trailing a young man from a car whilst attending his grandmother's funeral went viral. Indeed the heavy police presence at Rita McKernan's funeral was described as being reminiscent of the past.
Even allowing for overstatement both events struck a chord in our collective consciousness. And those born after so-called policing reforms got a glimpse of the sectarian beast that lurks within. A better contrast could not have been provided than the video of a large crowd of loyalist paramilitaries stomping through Pitt Park as several cops watched on.

Gerry Kelly waxing surprise is the real surprise here. 

Currently, one of the PSNI attackers has been suspended and another recycled elsewhere, something like the Catholic Church does with its offending priests. There will be no cop hung out to dry on this one. Six months down the line, when the dust has settled, he will likely be judged to have done nothing unlawful or improper.

Whatever the outcome for the individual PSNI officer, for the PSNI as a police force, the message emitting is a Brechtian one: For though the world has stood up and stopped the bastard, the bitch that bore him is in heat again.

⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

Baleful And Belligerent

Anthony McIntyre shares his thoughts on the British police arrest of two Northern journalists.

PSNI Stone Journalists For Turning Stones

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