Policing Board counter SF policing approach

Members of Northern Ireland's Policing Board have met with leading political figures in Washington to counter Sinn Féin claims that policing reforms are not working in Northern Ireland.

Sinn Féin is believed to have spent around $25,000 a full-page advert in the New York Times which said that the PSNI was deeply flawed and that republicans would not join the Policing Board because the new force lacked support in Nationalist areas of Northern Ireland.

However, Policing Board Chairman, Professor Desmond Rea and Board colleague, Tom Kelly said they were in the US capital "to set the record straight" on the speed of policing reform and implementation in the province.

Speaking from Washington following a meeting with President Bush’s Special Envoy to Northern Ireland, Dr Mitchell Reiss, Professor Rea said: ”It is important that audiences in the US are not misled by the false propaganda being used for party political purposes by some politicians. Policing reform has been the one true success story of the Belfast Agreement in Northern Ireland and the changes in the structure and delivery of policing have been transformed by the role of the Board.

”The successful partnership between the various inter-dependent aspects of policing from the Board to the PSNI and from the Ombudsman to the Oversight Commissioner has meant that policing with, and of, the entire community is noticeably and significantly improved throughout Northern Ireland.”

Dr Reiss recently attacked Sinn Féin’s NY Times advert saying it "depicted an untruthful version of the state of policing in the North".

Speaking on BBC Radio, the US Envoy said: “At best it [the advert] was enormously misleading and at worst it was untruthful. I’d be happy to go down point by point with a rebuttal to each of the allegations and justifications that Sinn Féin have for not joining the policing board.

"The bottom line is that there are massive untruths there, and they need to reconsider their position as soon as possible."

Professor Rea and Mr Kelly have been meeting with leading Republican and Democratic political figures along with senior government and policy officials in Washington during their three day visit.

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