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Orde: year on a roller coaster

February 16, 2011

By Staff Reporter

Asked about how he looks back on his first year as chief constable he smiled and recalibrated the question.
?My first one year, one month and four days,? he said, having been appointed to the job on Sept. 1, 2002. Then he added: ?It?s been an absolute roller coaster.? Organizationally, he has now brought the Special Branch under the control of a new structure. Meanwhile, on the paramilitary front, he admitted that the police fear that a further split could rock the Provisional IRA if the movement goes ahead with a statement declaring that its war is over.
Last year, Orde was put in charge of a force with a mandate to reorganize it.
?We?ve moved forward on the key issues,? he said. Among them is ?decentralization, and the shift from a central hierarchy to a devolved structure underpinned by a performance regime. That?s new.? Among the crucial changes is the establishment of Crime Operations, which handles all intelligence. This is clearly meant to meet the failings of the old system prevalent under PSNI?s predecessor, the Royal Ulster Constabulary, which was heavily criticized, especially by nationalists, for allowing the Special Branch the dominant role in information gathering. The branch was often accused of refusing to share intelligence with other units.
?We?ve destroyed this idea that some people have some intelligence and other people have other intelligence,? Orde said. ?Now, it?s all under one head. We get the whole picture. How we act on it is another matter.?
According to Orde, another one of the crests on this roller-coaster ride has been the police success against organized crime.
?There are quite a few UDA brigadiers in custody,? he said. ?The way into a lot of this has been through the drugs market. The drug squad has been incredibly successful.? In the last year, millions of pounds worth of marijuana and ecstasy has been seized.
?More importantly, the people being arrested are the paramilitaries who are funding their activity,? he added. This is an area where Orde has already had some experience. While he served in the London Metropolitan Police, he made his reputation cracking Jamaican drug gangs such as the Yardies.
?We haven?t fired a baton round since I have been in the post — that?s another high,? Orde said. ?I think it?s a high for everyone.?
Orde also welcomed the recent remarks that Gerry Adams the Sinn Fein president made when he said that the party?s aim was to bring an end to physical force republicanism.
?Are the Provisional IRA going to go back to war?? he asked somewhat rhetorically. ?I don?t think so.? Orde said that the police had no concrete indication of an upcoming move from the Provisional IRA, such as the long-awaited statement that they were going to disband.
?There?s a lot of talk on the street,? the chief constable said. ?But nothing?s happened and the biggest problem to address is can Adams deliver PIRA? Can they deliver the whole army? I don?t think so. Don?t forget the dissidents.? He stresses that as one of the real downers — the fact that dissident republican groups such as the Real IRA have been successful in recruiting new members.
?If a few key players leaped across then you increase their capability and capacity exponentially. You make them a lot more dangerous.? The police estimate that currently, the numbers of republican dissidents are in ?the low hundreds.? They have been involved in a series of threats and low-level attacks on members of the District Policing Partnerships. The police are watching anxiously to see if the RIRA escalate those attacks in the coming weeks.
?They?ve not got much to lose,? Orde said. ?They could become more dangerous before they become less dangerous.?
Orde has been operating for most of his term as chief constable in a political vacuum — the Northern Ireland Assembly having been suspended about six weeks after he took up the post. He?s hoping for a solution soon.
?If the democratic process gets left too far behind my job gets
a hell of a lot more difficult,? he said.

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