Earlier this week it was reported that on one particular night there were only eight police officers available to cover the whole of Derry City. Now this revelation came about after police answered a call to the Fountain and will be shocking news to most people living here.
Commonsense alone would tell anyone that eight officers is nowhere near enough to properly police a city this size. If this is the number on duty then it is no wonder that we also had reports of the police not responding to calls from local people fo
r help during various other incidents. Policing has become a lot less contentious in recent years but one question that has to be resolved is that of proper resources. It seems that there are simply not enough police officers on duty to deal with the level of incidents in the city.
Now who is to blame for this state of affairs remains to be seen. The Policing Board should be closely questioning the Chief Constable to see where the problem lies. Is it in rostering for duty? Is it a matter of more resources needed? Or what is the problem?
There is no chance, even with the best will in the world, of eight police officers being able to provide the policing this community deserves and needs. From being a society that was too heavily policed we seem to have moved to one that is not being policed enough. There has to be a happy medium that will see proper policing provided with adequate resources.
