Police close Springfield road station

Police officers were today shutting the gates of a station in the heart of republican west Belfast for the last time.

Springfield Road Police Station, which has been operating for 35 years and was once the divisional headquarters for west Belfast, finally closed to the public.

Officers bade an emotional farewell to the heavily fortified station off Belfast’s Falls Road.

The station was being closed in the wake of policing reforms which have seen the Royal Ulster Constabulary renamed the Police Service of Northern Ireland.

The police have also been restructured in an attempt to draw more Catholic and nationalist recruits.

Today’s closure came 24 hours before the PSNI’s new Chief Constable, Hugh Orde, takes up his post.

As officers prepared to shut the iron gates of the Springfield Road station, Acting Superintendent Peter Farrar said it was “a sad day” for many in the PSNI and its predecessor, the RUC.

“Obviously it is sad to see any police station close but a lot of policing in previous years has moved to other stations,” he said.

“Over the past five years this station has only really been used for community policing. People in the area come in to report crimes.

“There are a lot of memories about this place, some of them tragic, but at the end of the day it is only a building. The police will continue to serve this community from stations on the Grosvenor Road and New Barnsley.”

Soldiers were also deployed in the base at the height of the Troubles, often accompanying RUC officers as shifts changed.

The station acted as west Belfast’s divisional headquarters until the mid-1980s.

Constable Tony Jordan of Sector Beat, who served in Springfield Road during the 1980s and against the late 1990s, was philosophical about its closure.

“It is an end of an era – no doubt about that,” he said.

“It is only bricks and mortar but there will always be a collective memory of this place among the police officers, civilian staff and military who served here.

“They were just a bunch of ordinary people doing their job in extraordinary circumstances. There is a certain sadness and pride in the memory of colleagues who served here.”

Part of the fortifications swallowed up much of Violet Street where only a pedestrian pathway remains.

Nationalist SDLP councillor Margaret Walsh, who visited the station for the last time today, hoped Violet Street would be returned to the community.

“I and my colleagues have written to the chairman of the Policing Board, Des Rea, asking if the land can be given back to the community.

“West Belfast has a chronic housing shortage and there is a waiting list stretching back three years, so a site like this would go some way towards addressing that.

“Clearly there are a lot of personal memories and tragedies attached to a place like this for the community and the police.

“My own personal memory is of getting my car stolen in the Royal Victoria Hospital during rioting in the Falls and having to report it here. The police gave my sister, six children and I a lift home in a jeep.

“But I have to say the nationalist community welcomes the prospect of resources like this now being ploughed back elsewhere.”

Chief Inspector Farrar said in recent years community relations had improved since the ceasefires.

“I think we have seen in recent years, even before the PSNI came into being, a relationship develop between the community and our officers,” he said.

“While there is still a threat from certain terrorist factions, I have to say our officers have been able to go about their business on a day to day basis.

“That job will continue while the memories of Grosvenor Road police station live on.”