SDLP calls for unarmed force pure fantasy, says PSNI

The SDLP is living in a dreamworld over its call for an unarmed police force in Northern Ireland, rank and file officers claimed yesterday.

Outraged Police Federation officials hit out at the nationalist party for putting out radical security proposals without consulting officers first.

Assistant secretary Terry Spence said: “This is fantasy policing. It is frustrating that the SDLP seems unable to take up the federation invitation to talk to rank and file police officers so its views on policing might be better and more realistically informed,” he said.

A new SDLP document has set out the party’s aims that all guns carried by the force should be binned and up to 25 police stations and army bases closed.

Party leader Mark Durkan has asked Chief Constable Hugh Orde to carry out a fresh security assessment in a bid to strengthen its ambition of moving towards an unarmed police service.

The draft paper insisted police in Northern Ireland have already begun scaling down security, with many districts no longer using long arms and more cars used instead of jeeps.

But any move to disarm faces intense resistance from officers who still fear they are being targeted by dissident republican terrorists.

Federation officials debated the issue 10 years ago and concluded that even without the terror threat modern policing needed an armed civilian service.

Mr Spence added: “Today the threat of terrorism remains real and gun crime is habitual among the paramilitaries and the plainly criminal.

“We see no prospect whereby officers would elect to patrol unarmed or if in public order situations to have neither the protection of plastic baton rounds, which is also mooted, nor guns.”

The SDLP document also named up to 25 police stations and barracks across the North that should be shut.

It has targeted four police stations in Belfast, including one in the staunchly nationalist Andersonstown district, and Rosemount base in Derry.

With many of these buildings already earmarked for closure, furious political representatives accused the party of an electoral stunt.

Ian Paisley Jr, one of the Democratic Unionists on the Northern Ireland Policing Board, said: “The SDLP would appear to want to take a greener position in relation to policing than that of their colleagues in Sinn Féin/IRA.

“The SDLP have adopted policy positions that can only be explained by their increasingly desperate attempt to retain support in the forthcoming Assembly elections.”

Cross-community Alliance Party MLA Seamus Close accused the party of dangerous hype.

He said: “It has been known for some time a number of stations may have to close, but this is because the chief constable has decided it is an effective way to get officers back on the streets, not because the SDLP demands it.”