Delivery of policing will continue

Last Friday morning, one of our officers almost lost his life. In the heart of a community in Antrim, terrorists callously placed a device under his car. He is now in a critical condition. Our thoughts are with his wife and family at this time.

And we are left with the stark reality that in our communities, there are people who wish to murder our police officers. Police officers, who daily, serve those communities, work to protect people, keep them safe. I want our officers to stay safe; they want to be out on the frontline, delivering the job they joined to do.

This is not how I imagined my first blog of 2010 would read. It is difficult to accept that we still have to face such horrendous incidents. But I believe as a police service we are capable of dealing with them. Talking to many of my colleagues over the weekend, they have made it clear to me that they will not be deterred from delivery a policing service, from working with communities to protect them from harm. Indeed incidents like this only serve to strengthen our resolve to keep delivering that service.

What I am asking for now is for communities to help protect the lives of the very people who work hard to make Northern Ireland safer. Our officers and staff live in those communities, they are very much part of them. Any information, even the smallest piece may help us investigate this very serious incident and work to prevent something like it happening again.