William Matchett: It’s absurd that terrorists are being equated to the police
The same can be said of a legacy platform created by the 1998 Belfast Agreement.
In Northern Ireland’s darkest days two sets of terrorists hated cops who stood between them and the people. The deadliest waged insurgency. They called cops the enemy, legitimate targets to be killed on and off duty.
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Hide AdInsurgent propagandists pulled the strings of the most liberal elements in a liberal democracy to taint the police force and security response it led, brutal and bigoted.
The lies sugar-coated and distracted from premeditated mass murder that spilled over, at times, in ethnic cleansing by Republic of Ireland-based insurgents.
In the legacy platform, academics, pressure groups, Police Ombudsman and suchlike are the most trenchant critics of security policy. In a blanket hiring ban for cops in legacy investigations, they hold that the perception is local cops tarnish these because they are, essentially, war criminals.
That is, conspiracy theory is premised on security policy being sinister wherein every state actor is presumed guilty of acting with impunity.
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