Local residents have noted with growing concern the use of community centres and youth clubs in the Lenadoon and Colin areas by armed PSNI personnel.
Lasair Dhearg spokesperson Pádraic MacCoitir said, “The PSNI attended Saints Youth Club in Twinbrook, Colin Youth Development Centre in Poleglass and Horn Drive Community Centre as part of their ‘normalisation offensive’ over the last number of days.”
“We reiterate our call to keep community and youth spaces neutral and safe spaces. The presence of armed PSNI personnel is totally unacceptable and doesn’t reflect wider sentiment in the area. The overwhelming majority of people in these areas completely reject the PSNI and it is disappointing that a small minority working in these centres are being used to assist the PSNI with their normalisation agenda.”
“The PSNI organise these events which are effectively Public Relations exercises as part of a publicly disseminated ‘hearts and minds’ strategy to win over our community. While at the same time they have forcibly stopped and searched hundreds of thousands of people in the last ten years; the equivalent of one fifth of the population of the Six Counties, which have led to very little arrests.”
“The PSNI refuse to record the community background of those that they publicly humiliate with these searches because they know that it would clearly show that their use of draconian stop and search legislation is used almost exclusively against one community; ours.”
“Friendly faces in our youth spaces stands in stark contrast to the fact that they have forcibly strip searched more than 27 children, some as young as just 12 years old, in 2021 alone, a pointless endeavour when nothing was found in the extreme majority of cases. More worrying is that an appropriate adult was not present in 26 of those 27 instances.”
Pádraic said, “We will be reaching out to the management of these facilities in the coming days, who undoubtedly do great work, to raise a number of serious concerns in relation to this matter.”
ENDS
