‘As far as we are concerned the dissidents are the law’
The estate of corporation houses and flats is separated from Lismore Manor, where 48-year-old Constable Stephen Carroll was gunned down on Monday night near an expanse of grass and a small stream.
Yesterday afternoon houses in the estate and nearby Drumbeg were the focus of PSNI officers’ attention as, armed with semi-automatic rifles, they raided homes searching for people connected to their colleague’s killing. A police helicopter circled overhead.
Beyond the posse of media congregated on the area separating Ardowen from Lismore a couple were becoming agitated as they demanded to know why officers had bundled their 17-year-old son into the back of a heavily armoured PSNI van.
After about 10 minutes’ questioning, the youth was led from the vehicle to an awaiting PSNI car, his hands cuffed below a white forensics shroud which covered his head and upper body. His mother and stepfather were bluntly informed the young man was under caution suspected of involvement in terrorism and was being taken to “Antrim barracks” for questioning.
“He was just walking down the street when they seized him,” his mother protested to officers.
His stepfather said the only reason the youth had been arrested was because he had attended a Republican commemoration where his car registration number had been “clocked” by police.
Shortly afterwards half a dozen officers donned flak jackets to enter a nearby block of flats from which a tricolour, minus the orange section, fluttered. Men drank cups of tea as they looked out from an open upstairs window, refusing officers’ demands to open the door.
After a couple of moments’ stand off, a battering ram was used to force in the bottom pane of glass on the block’s front door. Officers crouching to gain entry were outnumbered by the mob of cameramen and journalists crowding behind them. The owner of the flat they were about to search, originally from the Ardoyne area of Belfast, had earlier expressed his views on the previous night’s events and the impeding police raid.
“I can understand one of their own was shot and they need to be seen to be doing something about it, you know, ‘we’re the law, these dissident Republicans are not the law’. But as far as we are concerned the dissident Republicans are the law because they could come and do what they like with us.”
Laughter was provoked among youths congregated beside the PSNI vehicles when one shouted “who ordered the pizza?”, a reference to the killing on Saturday of two British soldiers in nearby Antrim as they stepped out of their barracks to collect a fast food delivery.
Another local said: “These would have been IRA strongholds. But the Provos they are keeping out of it, now they’re for peace.
“The fellas that done this (the constable’s murder) are not young lads; the peelers (police) know who they are, why don’t they arrest them rather than the young lads? Tonight they’ll be out rioting destroying their own area.”
On a nearby wall graffiti stated “CIRA Back to War” — perhaps things have not changed in parts of Northern Ireland as much as we had hoped.
