KEY POINTS:
When Dame Margaret Bazley released her report on police conduct just five months ago she expressed real doubts about whether the force could sustain the necessary impetus to change its culture. Judging by the defensive speech from Police Association president Greg O'Connor this week she was right to be concerned.
"Lay off the police" was the nub of his message when he opened the association's annual conference, arguing that they were being criticised too much and too unfairly and that this was harming their effectiveness.
"In the past, criticisms that we knew had no real substance would have been shrugged off. Now no one wants to do that 'just in case'," he said. "We're too quick to put police on trial time after time, 'just to be on the safe side,' and all the while oblivious of the damage we're doing."
To blame were the usual suspects - media, politicians and an ill-informed public.
There is no doubt that, in recent years, the police have come in for an unusually high degree of criticism, some of it unfair.
Take for instance the provocatively simplistic claim that people have been shot merely for breaking windows or vandalising cars. Mr O'Connor rightly gave the lie to such an absurd allegation.
But he went on to make a few absurd statements of his own that suggest he is in a state of denial over some of the real problems identified by police critics. For instance, he characterised Dame Margaret's report as being "as close to a clean bill of health as you can get".
He said the commission of inquiry had looked at 25 years of police history and re-examined 400 cases but come up with only four in which proper investigation did not take place.
This came from reading the actual report and he blamed media reporting for creating a contrary impression. Yet he ignored the report's findings that there were 141 sexual assault complaints with sufficient evidence to lay criminal charges or take disciplinary action.
This is hardly the clean bill of health that Mr O'Connor claims and if the point must be emphasised you need only refer to Dame Margaret's 60 recommendations to change the police culture, including annual audits to make sure that a state of denial is not allowed to prevail.
But of course, Mr O'Connor had more than the Bazley inquiry on his mind. He was also smarting over the coverage of what he called the "anti-terror raids".
He lamented that it was not the actions of violent extremists being scrutinised but the actions of the police. In itself this is misleading because the behaviour of those charged has been reported as far as is possible under the circumstances.
Nevertheless it is true that the police have come under close scrutiny albeit with compelling reasons that Mr O'Connor ought to appreciate. As much as there is real public concern over the possibility that terrorists are operating in our midst, there is equal concern at the draconian nature of our new and untried anti-terrorism laws with their potential to infringe on cherished civil liberties.
In using the phrase "violent extremists" Mr O'Connor left no doubt about where his sympathies lay but given the importance of what is at stake, he should expect more scrutiny rather than less in the near future. This will doubtless be an irritation given that he argues the police must be the most scrutinised organisation in the country's history and "none of that scrutiny has ever disclosed any substantial problem".
Nothing spells out more clearly his state of denial. It is hoping too much to expect a change of heart but if ever vindication was required for Dame Margaret's insistence on annual audits, then this is it.
