This is an anonymous letter from a serving PSNI officer. Whilst we don’t endorse everything the writer says, we’re publishing it because we feel it reflects (albeit subjectively) the current feelings of many within the operational ranks of the Service.
For the first time in my 25 year police career, I have felt a new emotion never felt before. This is absolute and total embarrassment.
As the data breach news spread across all media, I was in a garage in uniform to purchase my lunch. Walking up to pay, I looked at the newspaper stand and then the other customers waiting to pay. They looked at me and for the first time ever I felt embarrassed to be in a police uniform and unnervingly self-conscious.
The data breach was just another example of the sad and dysfunctional organisation that the PSNI has become through poor leadership, a corrupt culture and a glaring lack of concern for its people.
I would use the word ‘leadership’ in only the loosest of terms. The PSNI is largely led, at least from Superintendent rank upwards, by managers and not leaders.
The promotion system is geared towards promoting people like those dragging the organisation to destruction. They are a self-perpetuating elite focused on bringing up those who will not stand for what is right and instead focus on who is right.
The organisation has many talented people in the ranks of its Chief Inspectors, but it holds those of integrity and service back while promoting those with much less service as they tick the box and will blindly follow the so-called executive team.
Many activities of senior officers are at worst totally ignored and at best treated as a learning experience.
Leadership talked about the importance of the workforce but did not follow this up with action.
They would not listen to those who operationally did the job and operated in the high tower of Brooklyn.
Those of Chief Inspector rank and below, on the other hand, are treated to the full force of the discipline system. Many minor matters are deliberately turned into major enquiries and the discipline system used as punishment for anyone daring to stand up for fairness and what’s right.
The Ormeau Road incident has been one of many festering sores on the dying body of the PSNI.
From early on, everyone knew that leadership were manipulating the system for their own ends and throwing officers under the bus. Their actions led others below them to take part in this shameful act and symbolised the perverse alternate universe that our once proud organisation had become.
The judicial review was the final breach that broke the dam and released a wave of anger, and I would say hatred of the service executive that had been building for years.
I have never seen a situation where the PSNI was so divided between the senior ranks and the majority of the Service. Even more stark was the realisation that the normally invisible Superintendents Association and NIPSA were also split from the self-serving elite at Brooklyn HQ.
The entire ‘Top Team’, as they refer to themselves, have lost any connection to reality.
They are certainly not a team and for years it has been common knowledge that their main focus has been on outdoing each other, trying to get promoted and settling scores with anyone in the rank and file who had the audacity to stand up for what’s right or heaven forbid, win a complaint or industrial tribunal claim.
The standing phrase for those in the ranks was ‘they will get you in the long grass’. This summed up the clear fact that senior management would act harshly towards anyone who complained and ensure that they would either be blocked from promotion or moved to a role they didn’t want from one they loved.
Decent and good officers have commented that the senior leadership of the PSNI and the whole rotten system they developed has done more damage to the service than the IRA ever did or even dreamed of.
I have heard people lament that it was actually a better time during The Troubles, as at least morale was high and we worked as a team.
These days I, and many others, honestly believe that the greatest threat against us is not terrorism or violent criminals. Rather it is the senior officers and the senior civilian staff that cause us sleepless nights and make us want to leave an organisation that we daily risk our lives and our families for.
In a time of unprecedented budget lows, hiring a Chief Operating Officer and numerous Assistant Chief Officers has caused resentment and bemusement.
We didn’t need these people in much more difficult times and their presence has only served to cause more confusion and increase ineffectiveness across the whole service.
Byrne has gone but other senior officers must also go. The rest of the Assistant Chief Constable should consider their positions and ask themselves if they would serve everyone better by going.
They are not the only ones; we need a total reset down to the Chief Inspector ranks. At this critical time, we need leaders and not managers.
We now know the damage this managerial cabal has brought but true and internally respected leaders can bring us back to the service Northern Ireland’s survival depends on.
This is a guest slot to give a platform for new writers either as a one off, or a prelude to becoming part of the regular Slugger team.
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