POLICE officers could face a round trip of over 80 miles to take a person they have arrested to a custody suite.
A senior local officer has revealed there will be no PSNI custody suites in the entire Newry, Mourne and Down Council area and prisoners will instead have to be taken to Banbridge or Lurgan.
This would mean a person arrested in Strangford may have to be taken to Lurgan for processing – a round trip of 84 miles.
Downpatrick’s new police station is currently under construction but budget pressures have meant that plans for a custody suite have been ped with senior officers preferring the labour intensive, but cheaper, solution of busing prisoners elsewhere.
PSNI area commander, Chief Inspector Gillian West, met Down councillors on Monday night and said the decision on the location of custody suites has already been taken and is unlikely to change.
She said there is a cost associated with a 24-hour custody suite, including cleaning, feeding and monitoring prisoners and ensuring there are separate jailers for female prisoners.
She continued: “The two new designated custody suites for the Newry, Mourne and Down Council area will be in Banbridge and Lurgan. The turnaround times at the custody suites will also be much quicker as there will be prisoner process teams at each facility. There will be specific officers to take the prisoner and they will do the interviewing. Sometimes people, due to drink or drugs, are not fit for interview immediately and there is waiting process.”
Chief Inspector West believes the new system will help free up officers who once they leave prisoners at custody suites can return to their areas. She also confirmed a police van will be used to transfer prisoners to reduce the number of police cars used to take people to custody suites.
However, councillor Cadogan Enright, who has previously criticised plans not to have a custody suite in the new Downpatrick police base, expressed concern the new holding centres for prisoners will be outside the new council area.
“I have ongoing concerns that the new base in Downpatrick will not have a holding station and many of the parties represented in this chamber have highlighted how dangerous we think this is,” he continued.
“Older PSNI officers have confided to many of us that they dare not arrest people on some nights as it would strip the area of coverage while they spent half their shift going back and forth to Bangor where the current custody suite is located.”
Councillor Enright claimed young hooligans have told him they know the PSNI “cannot lift them” as they would have to be taken to Bangor. He also suggested that “abandoning” people taken to Bangor and who have no way of getting home again could be a human rights issue. He added: “I believe we need a holding centre in Downpatrick and this issue needs to be looked at again.”
Councillor Willie Clarke said he believed the new council area should have at least one custody suite and that people should not have to be taken to Banbridge or Lurgan.
“One of these suites should be in either Downpatrick, where a new station is being built, or in Newcastle. It would make sense to have a suite in Downpatrick and I think it is rather ironic that Banbridge and Lurgan have been suggested as the locations for these two facilities. I would like to know what criteria was used to determine there should be no custody suite in the Newry, Mourne and Down Council area.
“I believe taking frontline services such as this out of our district represents a false economy, but is nothing new as the situation is being replicated in other arms of the public sector, most notably health,” he declared. “I see no rationale for not having a custody suite in the new council area.”