PSNI commander ready for challenge

Gary Eaton comes from Birmingham originally, but in a 25 year long policing career, the 45-year-old has served with the Metropolitan Police, the PSNI serious Crime Branch in Belfast, in district C.I.D as well as a brief period in the training unit at Garnerville in order to acclimatise to policing in Northern Ireland.

Asked what attracted him to apply for his new post in Londonderry Mr Eaton said: “ The City of culture-there is good work going on there. The area is also well known throughout the rest of the service, certainly in terms of community engagement.

“We all like a challenge in our day-to-day work and feel from that challenge we get some sense of satisfaction, and certainly that’s what attracted me, as well as bringing my experience to what is already a highly experienced senior management team.”

In the wake of two murders and the rape of a woman in Londonderry in the last week, the senior policeman was also asked if his experience within serious crime units will help?

He said: “Certainly, the murders are absolute tragedies for the victims and their families and everyone connected to them. The rape is the type of crime we just do not want to see and it is a challenge for us to police those out from a prevention point of view. But, that leads me back to the biggest challenge, engaging with the community and with increasing confidence we can go about getting those messages out and getting a prevention style of policing in place in Foyle.”

Area Commander Eaton added that he was not overly not concerned about a burgeoning knife culture in the city and commented that it was rare that people here came to the attention of the police here fir carrying knives. He also stated however that the message that knives are “absolute lethal weapons” still needed to be put across.

Commenting on the recent prevalence of vigilante group R.A.A.D Mr Eaton said it was up to the PSNI to make sure that no group filled a perceived vacuum in the police’s anti-crime remit and will also consider Proceeds of Crime legislation to catch drug dealers.

“We’ve got to make sure that we step in and police drugs offences and show the community that this is our role and solely our role and doesn’t give any element the room to step in and say that because we are not doing our job properly they feel they have to take a position.”

The senior officer also said that action against dissident republicans remains at the top of the policing agenda. Recent bombings in the city, including the attack on the City of Culture offices he said has made him aware of the determination of the vast majority of people here not to let them succeed.

With the recent news that a dedicated PSNI unit has been constituted for the City of Culture in 2013, the area commander was also asked what other types of crime he expected to deal with apart from the dissident threat.

“If you bring a large number of people into the city it is inevitable that there will a spike in people taking advantage of that large number of people and there will be some extra policing challenges,” he said.