Community Confusion?
Is the DUP contributing to community confidence in its latest utterances regarding the full time police reserve or just spreading confusion all around?
Peter Robinson released a early this morning which sought to clarify the party position. Boiled down this is that "community confidence" is the only precondition, but the fate of the reserve is a "key element" in that confidence. Jeffrey Donaldson indicated that he is not necessarily insisting that the reserve is retained as an entity but wants those officers keen on staying to be subsumed as uniformed members of the PSNI.
Whilst this option sounds like an attractive compromise so far as the DUP is concerned Matt Baggott appeared to rule it out during his
The problem for the DUP is that their critics have been rubbing their hands in glee. The TUV leader Jim Allister claims the different DUP statements show the party to be in Maybe because the job prospects of 300 flesh and blood reservists is more tangible than the finances of future court cases and other aspects of policing and justice, the danger will be that this controversy overshadows the apparently generous Gordon Brown budget offer.
No matter what happens in the weeks ahead, the last few days have already left an impression of ambiguity and clever word play which doesn't tend to go down well with the public.
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