Scottish Police Commemorate NI Colleagues

Scottish police officers have been commemorating the sacrifice of their colleagues in Northern Ireland.

Within days of parts of a large bomb - containing 100 lbs of fertiliser - being recovered from a field in Co Fermanagh - where two PSNI officers escaped injury after the device failed to detonate properly last June, some 40 members of the RUC George Cross Foundation have attended a special dedication ceremony.

The bereaved RUC families and injured former RUC officers, were on hand to see a permanent commemorative display and plaque, dedicated to the RUC GC, opened at the Scottish Police College at Tulliallan Castle in Fife this week.

The display of artefacts, policing scenes and historical information honours all those who served in the Royal Ulster Constabulary from 1922 to 2001.

It also recognises the close cooperation between the force and the Scottish Police, particularly in relation to training and counter-terrorism.

The event also involved senior representatives of the PSNI, NI Policing Board and Northern Ireland Office and former officers from across Scotland.

It's not the first time the former RUC has been honoured by fellow policing organisations abroad.

In 2005 police in England and Wales created an RUC GC Room at the Bramshill Police Staff College in Hampshire.

Two years later the FBI erected a bronze sculpture at its training academy near Washington.

Plans for a new Policing Museum near the Garden of Remembrance at the PSNI's Brooklyn Headquarters in Belfast also received support in the Stormont Assembly on Monday.

The move is against a backdrop of continued threat with this week's bomb find - of parts in a beer keg device - on Tuesday by a man working on farmland.

The bomb was close to a hedge three miles outside Rosslea, Co Fermanagh.

The planting of the failed bomb by terrorists pre-dates more deadly operations, which this year saw both a PSNI officer and two soldiers shot dead.

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(BMcC)