Allister opposes Police Station closures
24 March 2012
TUV Leader and local MLA, Jim Allister, has expressed his anger at the PSNI proposal to persist with the closure of Broughshane and Portglenone Police Stations.
"At the public meetings we were assured the consultation exercise was genuine and that local opinion would count. Patently, it did not, because the turnout, particularly in Broughshane, could not have been greater, nor the opposition to closure more unanimous. Likewise, the logic of the arguments presented by the objectors was compelling. So, to find Chief Superintendent seeking to bulldoze ahead with his plan to reduce the police presence to a single station in the whole of the Ballymena district is grossly disappointing.
"It bodes ill that our police chief wants to diminish, not strengthen the police presence, particularly at a time of rising rural crime. He is letting the public down.
"The campaign against these closures is not over. The matter now passes to the Policing Board, which needs to realise that effective policing cannot be delivered without police stations in the rural hinterland both west and east of Ballymena. Promises of a mobile presence from a remote base fool no one. The ratepayers and taxpayers of Ballymena pay a proper police service and that is what they must have."
