The Police Service of Northern Ireland (Irish: Seirbhís Póilíneachta Thuaisceart Éireann, Ulster Scots: Polis Servis o Norlin Airlan) is the police force that serves Northern Ireland. It is the successor to the Royal Ulster Constabulary which, in turn, was the successor to the Royal Irish Constabulary in Northern Ireland.
The RUC was renamed on 4 November 2001 as a result of a ten-year reform plan for policing set up under the Belfast Agreement. This agreement required the creation of an Independent Commission on Policing for Northern Ireland, which became known as the Patten Commission after its chairman, Chris Patten. He originally proposed the name Northern Ireland Police Service; however the abbreviation NIPS was thought inappropriate for a variety of reasons. The final decision included in the Police (Northern Ireland) Act 2000 was to rename the force to the Police Service of Northern Ireland (incorporating the Royal Ulster Constabulary), to be shortened to the Police Service of Northern Ireland for operational purposes.
All major political parties in Northern Ireland, nationalist and unionist support the PSNI. At first the political party Sinn Féin, which represents about a quarter of Northern Ireland voters, had refused to endorse the PSNI until Patten's recommendations were implemented in full. However, as part of the St Andrews Agreement Sinn Féin announced its full acceptance of the Police Service of Northern Ireland at a special Ard Fheis on the issue of policing on 28 January 2007.
The other major nationalist party in the region, the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), has joined the Northern Ireland Policing Board and says that it is satisfied that the Patten recommendations are being implemented. In the summer of 2005, the SDLP's Alex Attwood estimated that 80% of Patten's recommendations had been implemented.
In September 2005 the PSNI established the Historical Enquiries Team to investigate the 3,269 unsolved murders committed during the Troubles.
Read more about Police Service Of Northern Ireland: Organisation, Jurisdiction, Education, Accountability, Recruitment, Policies, Uniform, Headquarters, Chief Constables, Ranks
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“... in Northern Ireland, if you don’t have basic Christianity, rather than merely religion, all you get out of the experience of living is bitterness.”
—Bernadette Devlin (b. 1947)
“Despite the hundreds of attempts, police terror and the concentration camps have proved to be more or less impossible subjects for the artist; since what happened to them was beyond the imagination, it was therefore also beyond art and all those human values on which art is traditionally based.”
—A. Alvarez (b. 1929)
“The more the specific feelings of being under obligation range themselves under a supreme principle of human dependence the clearer and more fertile will be the realization of the concept, indispensable to all true culture, of service; from the service of God down to the simple social relationship as between employer and employee.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)
“The northern sky rose high and black
Over the proud unfruitful sea,
East and west the ships came back
Happily or unhappily....”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“The tragedy of Northern Ireland is that it is now a society in which the dead console the living.”
—Jack Holland (b. 1947)