Ulster University Hosts Major Policing Event

There's a major policing conference underway today in NI with a tribute already paid to the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI).

The Stormont Justice Minister David Ford has praised the commitment of the PSNI to deliver community policing across all of Northern Ireland.

He was speaking at the PSNI's 10th Anniversary Conference - Change and Challenge - A New Conversation for Policing in Northern Ireland - where the Minister and Alliance party Leader paid tribute to those who have helped transform policing over the past decade.

David Ford said: "We now have a Police Service that is accepted and respected across the community and there is - with fewer and fewer exceptions - policing with consent.

"Policing with and within the community has been, and will continue to be, the cornerstone of progress. And despite the continuing threat, the PSNI is determined to deliver community policing across the whole of Northern Ireland.

"While we acknowledge the progress made, we cannot stop there. We should instead use that progress as a spur to our ambitions for the future.

"The next 10 years must be marked by our determination to police in a way that reflects the future that we want to achieve, rather than the past that terrorists want to drag us back to," he said also outlining how community ownership of policing is fundamental to moving policing further forward."

He was speaking at the University of Ulster, where, in association with the PSNI and the NI Policing Board, the institution is today hosting the major conference on the future of policing in Northern Ireland.

Ten years after the formation of the PSNI senior policing and justice professionals are joining community representatives, leading academics and politicians from Northern Ireland and beyond at the University of Ulster's Jordanstown campus on both Thursday and Friday to address the new policing challenges facing society in the years ahead.

David Ford said: "The new Policing and Community Safety Partnerships will provide a dynamic forum for delivering locally developed, and locally supported, solutions to issues of crime and anti-social behaviour, as well as monitoring local police performance through policing committees."

Looking to the future, and the PSNI's wider role in society, the Minister continued: "In the future, I would like to not only see growing consent for the PSNI but growing support and we all have a role to play - in how we challenge and scrutinise, in the way in which we engage communities and importantly, how we broaden our response to social and economic problems.

"The PSNI is a key contributor to addressing some of the major issues facing society but they are not, and should not, be the only focus of our attention.

"Government needs to work together in moving Northern Ireland’s society forward – by getting to the real crux of what leads to community tensions, anti-social behaviour, the misuse of drugs and alcohol.

"Government must work in partnership to address these issues instead of continually looking to the police to deal with the fall out," he concluded.

(BMcC/GK)