Police officers from north and south of Ireland visit U.S.

Regardless of political setbacks in the peace process this week, the work of successfully integrating the Police Service of Northern Ireland’s (PSNI) into the lives of both communities in the north is moving ahead successfully.

That was the message brought to the U.S. this week by senior representatives from Northern Ireland’s groundbreaking Communities and Policing in Transition (CAPT) program, in which members of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and the Irish police force (Gardai Siochana) cooperate closely at all levels together.

Launched in September 2009 the cross border CAPT program attempts to defuse the legacy of sectarianism in Northern Ireland by tackling it head on, directly targeting disadvantaged and isolated communities historically distrustful of the police service and scarred by decades of conflict.

The cross border delegation visited with political leaders in Washington and New York this week to brief them on the significant progress their umbrella organization is making in the north. Since its inception CAPT has helped the north’s police force to forge stronger working links with the Republic’s, whilst the organization has also taken on the formidable task of helping to normalize community relations with the police force within Northern Ireland itself.

“Of course we respond to the changes in the political climate, but either way our work is going to have to continue,’ Liam Maskey, Executive Director of Intercomm Ireland, a conflict resolution group, told Irish Central. “It will have to be shirtsleeves rolled up more if the political climate goes sour. But even if it goes well – which we all hope it does – it gives us a chance to put the normalization of community policing into place properly.”

Composed of five main project partners who work in concert, CAPT includes the PSNI, the Garda Siochana, the International Conflict Research Institute (INCORE) the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) and the Tyrone-Donegal Partnership, a cross border development company, in its lineup. The diversity of the participant groups is part of its unprecedented cross border response to the complexity of the problems community policing faces in the north.

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Nster.com