Reserve ‘wants to stay in police’
Most of the Northern Ireland police’s full time reserve want to stay in the PSNI, their representative body has said.
Police federation chairman Terry Spence that that 301 out of 440 members of the reserve have said they want to stay.
Chief Constable Matt Baggott has said he would wind up the reserve by 2011 because there was no operational need for them.
Mr Spence said that the members of the reserve were “being pushed out”.
He said that the federation had contacted members of the reserve over the last two weeks and asked them if they were prepared to stay on in the police if their severance package was protected.
Mr Spence said that only 25 had said they still wanted to leave, 48 were in retraining and have had no opportunity to respond and 60 have not responded.
“Despite the level of threat they still want to serve the community,” he said.
The decision to wind-up the reserve has been controversial with the DUP saying the move could wreck plans to devolve policing and justice to the Northern Ireland Executive.
The DUP MP Jeffrey Donaldson has said he does not believe it will be devolved if the full time police reserve is phased out because there would not be the necessary unionist confidence.
The reserve is an auxiliary group of Northern Ireland police officers who support the regular force in mainly security-related policing work. It is integrated into the regular force.
It was set up in 1970 in response to the growing threat from paramilitaries. At its strongest it had about 3,500 officers, but now has only about 440.
It is to be phased out by March 2011, a move which was one of the recommendations of the Patten report which led to major reforms on policing in Northern Ireland.
However, the DUP had listed retaining the reserve as a confidence-building measure necessary for the devolution of policing and justice.
In recent days, there have been increasingly bitter exchanges between the DUP and Sinn Fein over the issue.
