Plastic Bullets and the PSNI: Don’t Join.
As the PSNI works to recruit from Republican communities such as our own in attempts to shore up their religious figures, you would do well to examine each aspect of the force’s human rights record, particularly that of its use of deadly weapons; weapons like the plastic bullet.
Since the introduction of the plastic bullet in the 1970’s and until the modern day, hundreds of thousands of them have been fired by British forces on Irish soil.
It is widely believed that the PSNI maintains a stockpile of over 50,000 plastic bullets at any one time, and since their introduction into the Six Counties, 17 people have been killed, seven of which were children. The plastic bullet, despite the death and injury it has caused, is still in use by the PSNI, with the Stormont government refusing to act toward its removal.
In theory, plastic bullets should be fired at the lower part of a target’s body and from a distance of more than 20 metres. But we all know theory doesn’t translate into practice and that these deadly bullets are fired at any part of the body including the upper abdomen and the head, and within that range. This has been borne out by the facts over many decades with many succumbing to wounds to the upper body and head by plastic baton rounds fired well within their range guidance.
Indeed, a 1999 report into the use of these deadly weapons during the Drumcree standoff determined that of the 8,165 rounds fired during the crisis, 39% were potentially life-threatening and impacted the upper part of the target’s body.
The report, carried out by five of the North’s most senior doctors at the time and published in the Journal of Trauma Injury, Infection and Critical care, considered these injuries inflicted to the body from the abdomen up to the head as constituting a risk to life.
The health and medical community have clearly laid out the lethality of these types of weapons and yet, in the face of decades of campaigning, with families torn apart by the pain of the loss of their loved ones, and with countless others permanently maimed and injured, the use of these weapons continues.
The British Government, its puppet assembly in Stormont, the PSNI and so-called ‘Policing and Community Safety Partnerships’ know exactly where our community stands when it comes to the use of these lethal weapons. Some of them have had decades to take them off the shelves if they wanted to. Instead, they continue to buy them, to store them, to train with them and to shoot them on Irish streets.
So you should remember the next time you see a PSNI recruitment poster on your street, that the PSNI have and continue to deny justice for those families who lost loved ones due to the use of these deadly weapons.
Don’t Join the PSNI.
ENDS
