Member

When I was the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland, I was very concerned about the number of complaints of wrongful use of force by Police Service of Northern Ireland officers. We conducted an analysis and established that the level of complaints about the use of force by the PSNI was 40 times the national average and that there were high levels of claims by people injured by police use of force. The number of sick days taken by officers was very high and the level of claims for injury on duty were very high. Complaints about abuse of force did not, as we thought, arise in anti-terrorist policing situation; they arose, as they do here, in situations such as arrest.