North's retired police officers given special roles
More than 300 former police officers in the North have been given specialist roles within the PSNI, the Policing Board heard.
Retired staff have been taken on again until the end of the year and beyond to carry out jobs for the service through a private recruitment company.
Deputy chief constable Judith Gillespie said they were expected to meet the same standards as regular members of staff.
“We have a plan to manage our reliance on this down over the next year but there will be some areas where we still need to maintain expertise for a period beyond December 2012 that we cannot provide out of our resources,” she said.
SDLP MLA Conall McDevitt told the meeting in Belfast there were 399 associate staff employed by Grafton Recruitment. A total of 304 were officers who retired since voluntary severance was introduced.
The issue was raised by Sinn Féin North Belfast MLA Gerry Kelly, who received assurances from Mrs Gillespie that they would cooperate with Police Ombudsman Al Hutchinson and were bound by the code of ethics which covers regular officers.
Ms Gillespie said 5,000 officers left the service under the Patten severance scheme, many with specific expertise.
She acknowledged that it was a period of financial uncertainty, with £135m worth of efficiency savings required, and she said the PSNI had to modernise its workforce amid question marks about the future of jobs secured under temporary funding.
“It makes eminent sense to employ staff with significant experience for a short period of time,” she said.
“If there are performance issues with these staff we draw those to the attention of their employers and contract is terminated and there are no questions. We expect the same standards of behaviour as all of our police officers.”
Democratic Unionist MLA Jonathan Craig said some individuals were determined to conduct a witch hunt against former Royal Ulster Constabulary officers.
“There needs to be some acknowledgement of the fact that those police officers have a high degree of knowledge around some of those issues, especially the Historical Enquiries Team issues, which might help those police officers move this forward,” he said.
“The witch hunt will eventually stop some day, maybe when these people are less paranoid about some of the knowledge that these people have about them.”
