The PSNI and ‘Community Policing’

Abstract

This chapter critically evaluates how the interaction between memory politics and police reform processes shapes current views of community policing within Irish republican communities. Establishing the overarching context of post-conflict police reform within which opposing narratives on community policing are pieced together, the chapter critiques the impact that changes in police symbolism, police composition and the nature of the core policing function fulfilled by the PSNI has had on views of policing within working class republican communities. It examines how the Patten programme of police reform has interacted with individual and collective memory to fashion opposing narratives on community policing. The chapter suggests that there are currently two competing master narratives on community policing that prevail within modern Irish republicanism; the ‘critical engagement’ narrative proffered by those in favour of policing that uses the memory of past ‘suspect community’ policing by the RUC to frame itself with assertions of newness, change and of the primary policing function now being to provide a policing service to local communities and the ‘cosmetic reform’ narrative espoused by those who continue to reject post-Patten policing in Northern Ireland that uses memory in a more ideologised manner in order to dismiss police reform as an attempt to normalise ‘British’ policing in Ireland.