An assumption that seems to be made about the PSNI is that non-nationalist, non-Catholic members are unionist and/or Protestant.

And maybe it is further assumed that they define and prioritise their role as being to police as unionists and Protestants.

As it happens, I don’t think that is the case. Indeed, I would go further than that and suggest that the fact that they don’t act in a manner which would be considered as pro-unionist and pro-Protestant is why sections of loyalism, the Orange Order and even mainstream unionism accuse the PSNI of overseeing ‘two-tier’ policing.

In other words, policing which is pro-nationalist/pro-republican, rather than pro-unionist and Protestant.

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I read deputy chief constable Bobby Singleton’s interview in this paper last week and I agree – and always have – that the post-1998 police force should be fully representative.

But I’m not persuaded, and never have been, that ‘fully representative’ should be defined as balanced numbers of nationalist/Catholic and unionist/Protestant officers.

Because that, to me anyway, carries more than a hint of political policing about it; by a force, whose members have specific and contradictory views of Northern Ireland’s political and constitutional status.

Bobby Singleton made the comment: “The........

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