PSNI Reserve to be scrapped

gilly0512

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/0616/1224248899620.html
Don't know if any of you saw this article in the Irish Times during the week, about the PSNI Reserve being scrapped over the next two years, although it would appear to be a consequence of Patten, and not a financial reason. While reserves in the PSNI are paid, have full powers and can drive Police vehicles, reserves down here don't get paid and have little or no powers. With that in mind its hard to see the reasoning for getting rid of the PSNI Reserve, as they are practically full time Police Officers anyway, while our Reserves are really just civilians in a Garda uniform?

civdef

This is only the full-time reserve they're talking about.

sunnyjim

What's the full time reserve? The specials?

Terrontress

sunnyjim wrote: »

What's the full time reserve? The specials?

They do everything a normal constable does but they have an 'R' on their shoulders.

It's just another item to keep the Shinners happy by emasculating a great police force. And then gives them something to complain about when there are so few police about.

Our man in Havana

Would the clever thing to do is absorb the full time reserve into the main PSNI?

And then gives them something to complain about when there are so few police about.

Is that not the situation now? I see very few police about in NI.

Terrontress

Bond-007 wrote: »

Would the clever thing to do is absorb the full time reserve into the main PSNI?


Is that not the situation now? I see very few police about in NI.

Yeah. That's exactly it. They have decimated the force and had imposed lots of restrictions. Then a man in his 50s is kicked to death and SF complain about police not having had the resources.

Same thing when they got rid of normal armed guards at army bases. When dissidents start shooting pizza men the dopes in fluoro jackets on £4 can do nothing. Then SF are quick to complain.

The PSNI reserve are some of most experienced officers in the North. To get rid of them to keep politicians happy is lunacy.

meathstevie

Given the historical context of police reservists' behaviour at the start of the Troubles there's historical argument to scrap the police reserve because at some time there might have been just a few too many in it for the wrong reasons. It's for the same reasons the RUC brand has been scrapped while the police was being reformed. You could have introduced any reform under the sun moon and stars but the RUC brand was simply unacceptable for too large a chunk of society to be kept on. Whether it's good, bad or indifferent is all a matter of personal opinion.

Terrontress

meathstevie wrote: »

Given the historical context of police reservists' behaviour at the start of the Troubles there's historical argument to scrap the police reserve because at some time there might have been just a few too many in it for the wrong reasons. It's for the same reasons the RUC brand has been scrapped while the police was being reformed. You could have introduced any reform under the sun moon and stars but the RUC brand was simply unacceptable for too large a chunk of society to be kept on. Whether it's good, bad or indifferent is all a matter of personal opinion.

I lived, as a Catholic, in NI until the age of 23.

In that time, the RUC caught the people who were targeting pensioners in my granny's street and torturing them for their savings. When the bikes of my brother and I were stolen they found them and got them back. When my school had its windows broken they stepped up patrols. We got caught messing with fireworks and were bought home by them. I had a mobile stolen from the car and they came round and took a statement. I got busted for drinking a can in the street. Some lunatic came in to our student housing looking for a fight and they came and arrested him.

Normal cop stuff.

I had moved to Dublin by the time they became the PSNI so I have no real experience of their work which has affected me but I wholeheartedly believe that having lived with both RUC and Gardai, having lived in a house which was broken into, having had my car broken in to numerous times, having experienced friends' dealings with AGS, I would prefer to live in a society policed by the RUC as it was than by AGS as it is.

But certain sections of politicians in Northern Ireland have lived as enemies of the Police for so long that they just want policing as a whole dismantled. Throughout the world, people are calling for more police. More patrols. More visible policing.

Those idiots are looking for less. And they will get it. And crime will increase.

meathstevie

Terrontress, don't get me wrong. What I was saying in my previous post is not that the people who were and are serving in the full or part-time reserve were or are bad quite the contrary. What I'm refering to is the historical context of policing in Northern Ireland, the reasons for the Patten report if you want. Let's put it in another way; if the RUC brand would have been left in place after the implementation of all the other Patten recommendations would it have led to a wider cross community acceptance of the police or not ?

jimmycrackcorm

I travel through the north every week and never see the psni out about doing the normal traffic duties that the Guards do here - I mean no checkpoint, no random testing, no speed checks. The only time I've seen them in the last year was the week after the policeman was shot a few months ago. Afgter a week it was all back to normal.