Further changes to policing are not "about the sky falling in" but "recognising the new ground on which we all find ourselves", SDLP leader Mark Durkan has insisted.
Mr Durkan was speaking after calling for movement towards a "routinely unarmed police service" and closure of 23 police stations and British army bases throughout Northern Ireland.
The new proposals – aimed at speeding up 'normalisation' – also recommended that land used by the security forces "should be returned to the community, for appropriate infrastructural, recreational, em-ployment and other purposes".
The document, unveiled yesterday, follows a meeting with Chief Constable Hugh Orde who was urged to carry out a fresh security assessment.
On the proposal for unarmed police, the SDLP referred to a recommendation in the Patten reforms that an unarmed force could be considered if the security climate was right.
The question of whether police forces should be armed has sparked widespread debate in the Republic and Britain as gun crime continues to soar.
Of the 43 police forces in Britain and Wales, only specialist teams known as the Armed Response Units, carry weapons.
The police chief of each region decides whether armed units are needed. Last night a spokeswoman for the Home Office confirmed that most forces now have armed officers.
In the Republic uniformed members of the Garda Siochana are not armed but plain-clothed officers carry guns.
SDLP Policing Board member Alex Attwood said: "We are not denying that there would be dedicated elements within the PSNI who will carry weapons or will have access to weapons.
"That would be the exception not the rule, whereas at the moment the rule is that all carry weapons in all circumstances with very few exceptions.
"Therefore, what we have to do is create a balance between having an appropriate armed response from within the PSNI with the widely democratically excepted norm of unarmed policemen."
As well as calling for the closure of 23 police stations and British army barracks across the north, including Derry and west Belfast, the party has also recommended a major overhaul of surviving bases to remove their "militaristic appearance".
"Releasing officers from the business of station-watching, releasing resources in human and capital from being tied up in obsolete hardware and moving to a situation where police officers are much more responsibly at the service of the community and much more pro-actively working in and for all communities. That is all part of the normalisation agenda, not just the normalisation of policing but in this society," SDLP leader Mark Durkan said.
"In the last number of months there have been some significant examples of further normalisation being delivered.
"Changes in this direction isn't about the sky falling in terms of policing, it is about us recognising the new ground on which we all find ourselves."
