The huge policing response to the Ipswich murders contrasts sharply with the PSNI's approach to serial killers, not least because PSNI officers have assisted the investigation. Perhaps they should ask their English colleagues for some assistance in return.
Officially, the PSNI has a clear-up rate of 69% for the 149 murders it has investigated since it came into being in 2001. But by "clear-up" the PSNI doesn't mean conviction of the guilty. It just means that a case was considered.
For example, 29 victims of the Omagh bomb were included in last year's cleared statistics although the Omagh trial has only begun.
Murders are also recorded as cleared if the police or the Public Prosecution Service decide that "no useful purpose would be served by proceeding". This is apparently what has been decided for the vast majority of paramilitary-related murders since the ceasefires.
Nobody has been convicted for any deaths due to the loyalist feuds. Nobody has been convicted for the IRA killings of informers, dissident republicans or unlicensed drug dealers. Even the exceptions suggest political manipulation. This month's jailing of an LVF leader for the murder of Portadown woman Elizabeth O'Neill came after a decade of lethal appeasement.
Of the 215 conflict-related deaths since 1994, only 17 have resulted in a successful murder or manslaughter conviction – an actual clear-up rate of just 8%.
This is appalling, farcical and totally unacceptable. Either the PSNI is not capable of doing its job or the PSNI has been told not to do its job. It can only be one or the other and it is time that the chief constable was asked which.
Sir Hugh Orde has criticised the role of judges in murder cases but he has been notably silent on the far more critical role of the Public Prosecution Service and the NIO. He has also frustrated at least one murder case himself. Why else did Sir Hugh suppress the coroner's report into the UVF killing of teenagers Andrew Robb and David McIlwaine if not to protect an informer?
The PSNI has two stock answers to explain failed investigations. The first is a lack of resources. This is a poor excuse while it has three times more officers per head of a population than many forces in England – especially when it has enough resources to send officers to England for a headline-grabbing case.
The second stock answer is that the PSNI needs more cooperation from the public. This is about as credible as PSNI insistence that it can't prosecute rioters without a complaint from the public.
The latest six-month survey by the Policing Board shows that 80% of both communities accept the legitimacy of the PSNI, although only half are satisfied with its performance. English metropolitan forces would be ecstatic with these figures.
If the chief constable feels that this overwhelming public acceptance is not translating into useful evidence then he should devote some of his plentiful resources to witness protection and lobbying for better legislation.
The new Justice and Security (Northern Ireland) Bill introduces welcome guarantees on juror anonymity but otherwise it leaves the full Diplock court system intact and available at the discretion of the politically directed Public Prosecution Service.
The judiciary understandably sets a higher standard of proof for non-jury trials and the Public Prosecution Service never adds witness intimidation to the charge sheet when such a trial is considered necessary. So threatening witnesses in a murder case still works very well. Shouldn't this be the focus of PSNI complaints about public non-cooperation?
Of course, those complaints would hold more water if the PSNI took public cooperation seriously. But that is not always the case.
Following the loyalist murder of Gerard Lawlor in 2002, two people called the confidential telephone with information on named individuals but their calls were never followed up. The second caller offered to testify but the PSNI claimed to have no record of the call. This caller contacted police again and gave a full statement but was told that nothing could be done without fresh evidence. Exactly how much public cooperation does the PSNI require?
Five people were murdered in Ipswich and every police force in the UK immediately descended on the scene. Yet many of the killers still running around Northern Ireland have taken just as many lives.
So where is the massive police response, the swift arrests, the endless anguished headlines? How many murders must we file away in the name of 'peace'?
