Police force admits it needs more Catholics

Northern Ireland’s police chief has admitted his force needs to work harder to appeal to potential recruits among the Catholic community, but suggested a greater effort is required from nationalist leaders to make a police career acceptable, write Paul Wilkinson and Martin O’Brien.

“We have a job of work to do to convince people that policing is inclusive, that it is a warm place for people of all backgrounds, of all faiths and none,” George Hamilton, the Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland(PSNI), told the Irish Catholic newspaper.

He was speaking the week after his deputy, Drew Harris, talked about plans for a new recruitment drive in the autumn, an advertising campaign targeting areas where it has been difficult to attract Catholics and shortening the recruitment process.

Mr Hamilton accepted that attitudes to the police among Catholics might require a “generational change”, but said: “We will be a better police service if we are representative, if we have an organisational mindset of being truly representative of the communities that we serve. I want the organisation to be the best that it can be and it can only be the best if is truly representative.”

He said he had been disappointed by poor support for recruitment among nationalist and Catholic leaders and opinion formers. “There hasn’t been the strength of advocacy for a career in policing that I would have hoped for,” he said, “probably more in the political realm than in the religious realm.”