Matt Baggott may have been the first PSNI chief to be appointed with the unanimous support of all parties, but his honeymoon hasn't lasted long. This week he is at the centre of a political storm where his credibility is being questioned by politicians.
Given the dissident threat, and low clear up rate for crime which Baggott has inherited, our politicians should cut him some slack. In Leicestershire everybody liked him, press interviews and scrutiny were rare and all the politicians sang his praises. Policing was not politicised.
We do things differently here, and Baggott is embroiled in a political storm which could force him to choose between buckling on an operational decision and sharing the blame for the breakdown of power sharing administration.
Let's hope it won't come to that, but it must be admitted that the Chief Constable has brought some of this on himself. Since taking over in September he has hidden behind media minders. The only good PR move he made was the photo call smiling beside the church leaders last week. The flip side of keeping his head down is that he has nobody to blame but himself for any faux pas he has made.
No journalist talked him into his ill judged interventions on the issue of suicide. Baggott sounded more like a lay preacher than a policeman when he exhorted the press to be compassionate and kind. Like the police, then, who had left an unfortunate man's body hanging for a bridge for over four hours before cutting it down? Baggott had no real room to lecture anybody.
His handling of that was cack handed, but it would have passed. The more serious gaffe was his ill timed statement, issued as a press release and not in the face of questioning, on the PSNI reserve. Picking that juncture to announce a final decision was like stepping on a hornets' nest; it is in all our interests to try and ensure that he is not stung too badly.
After criticising him, the natural question is how I think he should have handled it better, or how he could retrieve the situation. On the issue of the Bangor dual carriageway suicide, he should have said that the police had done what seemed best in unusual circumstances, but that after all such incidents, procedures were reviewed for any lessons that might be learned. He might have added that the press should also look at any lessons they might learn.
If he felt a statement on the police reserve was required, and he was being pressed by the Police Federation to make one, he might have said that the decision had been made by Sir Hugh Orde in line with Patten and had been approved by the relevant NIO ministers, so that is how things stand. He might have added, in the event of devolution of policing and justice, he would want to discuss this and other issues with the new policing minister in the light of security and budgetary priorities. That would give him until March 2011, when the reserve is due to be finally disbanded.
It would also have made devolution easier for the DUP, especially since he had given them what they wanted on personal protection weapons. If Baggott is determined to get rid of the reserve, he would have gained time to see how many officers were willing to leave, how many could be retrained for civilian functions in the PSNI and which could be retained as regular officers. He could still, just about, undo some of the damage by adopting this position now.
Instead, he has brought things to a head and the DUP, who should know better, have given him no wriggle room. Instead they have allowed Jim Allister, who showed great political nous in his conference and its aftermath, to paint them into a corner by making the retention of the reserve an absolute precondition for the devolution of policing and justice. "Until it is resolved we are not going anywhere fast" , Jeffrey Donaldson told Stephen Nolan yesterday, describing the issue as one of a series of preconditions for agreement.
What is that going to achieve? If there is no devolution of policing and justice, the PSNI reserve will still go, so tying the two issues is a big gamble. It is pouring petrol on the flames to say, as a DUP spokesman said yesterday, that Peter Robinson has "made his feelings clear" to Gordon Brown.
The implication is that the First Minister is trying to get the Prime Minister to help him twist the Chief Constable's arm in an operational matter. It seems unlikely that that is really Robinson's position for, if such a tactic were successful, it could become a resigning matter for Baggott.
This is all building up to a political and security crisis, and the only way out of it may be another round of St Andrews style talks in which the PSNI will be centre stage. This is no way to run a government or a police service.
