This list compiles incidents alleged or proved to be due to police brutality that attracted significant media or historical attention. Many cases are alleged to be of brutality; some cases are more than allegations, with official reports concluding that a crime was committed by police, with some criminal convictions for offences such as grievous bodily harm, planting evidence and wrongful arrest.
The Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) was the police force in Northern Ireland from 1922 to 2001. It was founded on 1 June 1922 as a successor to the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) following the partition of Ireland. At its peak the force had around 8,500 officers, with a further 4,500 who were members of the RUC Reserve.
During the Troubles in Northern Ireland, British security forces were accused by some of operating a "shoot-to-kill" policy, under which suspected paramilitary members were killed without an attempt being made to arrest them. This alleged policy was claimed to be most frequently directed against suspected members of Irish republican paramilitary organisations, such as the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), Official Irish Republican Army (OIRA) and Irish National Liberation Army (INLA). According to a 1985 inquiry by a team of international lawyers titled Shoot to Kill?, undercover security force units were "trained to shoot to kill even where killing is not legally justifiable and where alternative tactics could and should be used." The British government, including the Northern Ireland Office, consistently denied that there was ever a "shoot-to-kill" policy, stating that "like everyone else, the security forces must obey the law and are answerable to the courts for their actions."
The Historical Enquiries Team was a unit of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) set up in September 2005 to investigate the 3,269 unsolved murders committed during the Troubles, specifically between 1968 and 1998. It was wound up in September 2014, when the PSNI restructured following budget cuts.
The Loughgall ambush took place on 8 May 1987 in the village of Loughgall, County Armagh, Northern Ireland. An eight-man unit of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) launched an attack on the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) base in the village. An IRA member drove a digger with a bomb in its bucket through the perimeter fence, while the rest of the unit arrived in a van and fired on the building. The bomb exploded and destroyed almost half of the base. Soldiers from the British Army's Special Air Service (SAS) then returned fire both from within the base and from hidden positions around it in a pre-planned ambush, killing all of the attackers. Two of them were subsequently found to have been unarmed when they were killed.
This article recounts the violence and other effects related to The Troubles in Portadown, County Armagh, Northern Ireland, which lasted from the 1960s to 1998. Much of these events have been related specifically to the Drumcree parade dispute but relate more generally to the oppression with which the Catholic minority was treated and their efforts to exert power and resist the Protestants.
The Troubles in Armagh recounts incidents during The Troubles in Armagh City, County Armagh, Northern Ireland; the violence was substantial enough for a stretch of road on the outskirts of the city to be referred to by one RUC officer as "Murder Mile". Over the course of the Troubles, although mainly concentrated in the years from 1969 until 1994, the small city of around 15,000 people, including some outlying areas, saw 86 deaths, including those of a number of people from the city who lost their lives elsewhere in Troubles-related incidents.
The Troubles in Lurgan recounts incidents during the Troubles in Lurgan, County Armagh, Northern Ireland.
Operation Banner was the operational name for the British Armed Forces' operation in Northern Ireland from 1969 to 2007, as part of the Troubles. It was the longest continuous deployment in British military history. The British Army was initially deployed, at the request of the unionist government of Northern Ireland, in response to the August 1969 riots. Its role was to support the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and to assert the authority of the British government in Northern Ireland. This involved counter-insurgency and supporting the police in carrying out internal security duties such as guarding key points, mounting checkpoints and patrols, carrying out raids and searches, riot control and bomb disposal. More than 300,000 soldiers served in Operation Banner. At the peak of the operation in the 1970s, about 21,000 British troops were deployed, most of them from Great Britain. As part of the operation, a new locally-recruited regiment was also formed: the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR).
The Protestant Action Force (PAF) was a cover name used by Ulster loyalist paramilitary group the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) when claiming responsibility for a number of attacks during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Sometimes these actions were carried out with the assistance of members of the security forces. The name "PAF" was first used in 1974 and attacks by individuals claiming to be members of the PAF killed at least 41 Catholic civilians. All of the attacks claimed by the PAF in Armagh and Tyrone counties from 1974 to 1976 have been linked to the Glenanne gang, which was a loose coalition consisting of members of the UVF Mid-Ulster Brigade along with rogue Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) soldiers and Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) police officers. A six-year period of no attacks claimed by the PAF ended in 1982; during the 1980s, the PAF claimed 15 attacks in the Belfast area and two in County Armagh. UDR soldiers were convicted of two attacks in Armagh. The PAF claimed its last attacks in the early 1990s, all of which were in north Armagh and were alleged to involve members of the security forces.
The Reavey and O'Dowd killings were two coordinated gun attacks on 4 January 1976 in County Armagh, Northern Ireland. Six Catholic civilians died after members of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), an Ulster loyalist paramilitary group, broke into their homes and shot them. Three members of the Reavey family were shot at their home in Whitecross and four members of the O'Dowd family were shot at their home in Ballydougan. Two of the Reaveys and three of the O'Dowds were killed outright, with the third Reavey victim dying of brain haemorrhage almost a month later.
Paul "Dingus" Magee is a former volunteer in the Belfast Brigade of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) who escaped during his 1981 trial for killing a member of the Special Air Service (SAS) in 1980. After serving a prison sentence in the Republic of Ireland, Magee fled to England where he was imprisoned after killing a policeman in 1992. He was repatriated to the Republic of Ireland as part of the Northern Ireland peace process before being released from prison in 1999, and subsequently avoided extradition back to Northern Ireland to serve his sentence for killing the member of the SAS.
This is a chronology of activities by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) from 1980 to 1989. For actions before and after this period see Chronology of Provisional Irish Republican Army actions.
The Glenanne gang or Glenanne group was a secret informal alliance of Ulster loyalists who carried out shooting and bombing attacks against Catholics and Irish nationalists in the 1970s, during the Troubles. Most of its attacks took place in the "murder triangle" area of counties Armagh and Tyrone in Northern Ireland. It also launched some attacks elsewhere in Northern Ireland and in the Republic of Ireland. The gang consisted of soldiers from the British Army's Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR), police officers from the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), and members of the Mid-Ulster Brigade of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF). Twenty-five UDR soldiers and RUC police officers were named as purported members of the gang. Details about the group have come from many sources, including the affidavit of former member and RUC officer John Weir; statements by other former members; police, army and court documents; and ballistics evidence linking the same weapons to various attacks. Since 2003, the group's activities have also been investigated by the 2006 Cassel Report, and three reports commissioned by Irish Supreme Court Justice Henry Barron, known as the Barron Reports. A book focusing on the group's activities, Lethal Allies: British Collusion in Ireland, by Anne Cadwallader, was published in 2013. It drew on all the aforementioned sources, as well as Historical Enquiries Team investigations. The book was the basis for the 2019 documentary film Unquiet Graves, directed by Sean Murray.
Shoot to Kill is a four-hour drama documentary reconstruction of the events that led to the 1984–86 Stalker Inquiry into the shooting of six terrorist suspects in Northern Ireland in 1982 by a specialist unit of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), allegedly without warning ; the organised fabrication of false accounts of the events; and the difficulties created for the inquiry team in their investigation.
On 5 February 1992, there was a mass shooting at the Sean Graham bookmaker's shop on the Lower Ormeau Road in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Members of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), a loyalist paramilitary group, opened fire on the customers with an assault rifle and handgun, killing five civilians and wounding nine. The shop was in a Catholic and Irish nationalist area and all of the victims were local Catholics. The UDA claimed responsibility using the cover name "Ulster Freedom Fighters", saying the shooting was retaliation for the Teebane bombing, which had been carried out by the Provisional IRA less than three weeks before. A later investigation by the Police Ombudsman found that the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) had engaged in "collusive behaviour" with UDA informers involved in the attack.
William Elliot was a Northern Irish loyalist and a leading member of the Red Hand Commando (RHC) paramilitary organisation. He fled Northern Ireland after being implicated in the brutal 1994 murder of an epileptic Protestant woman, Margaret Wright, who was beaten and shot inside a south Belfast loyalist bandhall in the mistaken belief that she was a Catholic or informant for the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). For his part in the murder, Elliot was gunned down by members of his own organisation.
The killing of William L. Chapman II, a black 18-year-old, occurred on April 22, 2015, in Portsmouth, Virginia, when Chapman was shot and killed in a Wal-Mart parking lot by Portsmouth Police Officer Stephen D. Rankin. Rankin had been responding to a report of suspected shoplifting and engaged in a physical struggle with Chapman, who instigated the altercation while trying to arrest him. The shooting occurred approximately four years after the killing of Kirill Denyakin, who died after being shot by Rankin in 2011.
On 11 August 1970, two Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) officers were killed by a booby-trap bomb planted under a car by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) near Crossmaglen, in County Armagh, Northern Ireland. They were the first RUC officers to be killed by republicans during the Troubles and the first security forces to be killed in South Armagh, an IRA stronghold for much of the conflict.
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