Baggott’s first day as PSNI chief
Matt Baggott is to take over as the head of the Police Service of Northern Ireland on Tuesday.
The 50-year-old replaces Sir Hugh Orde and is the third leader of NI’s rebranded police force.
The married father-of-three comes to the PSNI after seven years as chief constable of the Leicestershire Constabulary.
One of his first engagements will be a meeting with the Policing Board Chairman Barry Gilligan.
Mr Baggott will also be meeting senior commanders of the force, which has 7,321 regular officers.
He takes over at a time of shrinking police budgets and a surge in dissident republican activity.
Within the last month there has been the discovery of a 600lb bomb in a border area and civil disturbances in Lurgan.
His command team was so concerned at the prospect of a dissident attack to overshadow his arrival they launched an operation aimed at disrupting it.
Codenamed Operation Dissent, it saw an increase in vehicle checkpoints and high visibility patrols.
The threat from dissident republicans while not in the same league as that once posed by the IRA is deadly.
Two soldiers and a police officer have been killed by dissidents in 2009.
The murders were condemned across the political spectrum, with the leadership of mainstream republicanism branding the dissidents “traitors”.
