Bereaved Families meet Policing Board

The Families Bereaved Through Car Crime group have met with the Northern Ireland Policing Board’s Community Involvement Committee to discuss the Northern Ireland Office’s (NIO) recent consultation document on road traffic offences.

Members of the group talked about the new threat posed by ‘run-arounds’ (untaxed and uninsured second-hand vehicles) and the need for effective deterrents and educational programmes to reduce this type of crime. The Families also informed the Committee that they had called for the extension of the PSNI’s Auto Crime Team in west Belfast to other areas.

Speaking on behalf of the Families, Kieran Conlon, who’s 21-year old son was killed last year, said: “We are a small group of families and we don’t want to get any bigger, as we don’t want another family to go through what we have gone through. We just want it to stop now.

“When one person is killed, the whole community is affected and those that kill and are convicted must not be treated by the system like they have committed some simple traffic offence. They have taken a life and should be treated like they have and that was one of the messages we took to the Policing Board."

Denis Bradley, the Chairman of the Community Involvement Committee, said: "Community Policing is at the core of the new policing arrangements and the community’s support for the work of the police service is at the heart of achieving effective and efficient policing.

"For the Board to give a considered and helpful response to the consultation paper, we felt that it was important to talk to the PSNI, who will be responsible for delivering any subsequent changes to the legislation, and a group of people who have been so devastated by the effects of car crime. Yet through their own pain, they have done so much to warn others of the dangers of what really should be known as ‘Death Riding’."

Mr Bradley also paid tribute to the work of the Families in raising awareness of the issues involved and for the “professional, dignified and effective way that they outlined their position on what needs to be done”, he said.

Families Bereaved Through Car Crime is a group lobbying against so-called 'joy-riders' made up of eight families brought together after the loss of loved ones through car crime. The group came together after the death of Debbie McComb on 1 March 2002.

(MB)