CAMPAIGNERS have called on Chief Constable George Hamilton to “rid his force of plastic bullets”.
Clara Reilly, chair of Relatives for Justice, made the appeal at an annual protest in west Belfast last night.
Mrs Reilly, who was a founding member of United Campaign Against Plastic Bullets along with Emma Groves, said the PSNI chief must “demonstrate that he is real about meaningful change”.
Ms Groves, who died in 2007, was blinded after being struck in the face by a rubber bullet in 1971.
The protest was held close to the spot where 22-year-old Sean Downes was killed after being struck by a plastic bullet fired by an RUC man in August 1984.
“These indiscriminate weapons have claimed 17 lives, nine of them school children, disfigured, maimed and injured thousands more,” she said.
“Eighteen years on from the Patten Report on policing reform and 22 years after the first ceasefires and still these lethal weapons remain. It just beggars belief.
“The use of these weapons has left an awful legacy of loss, grief, and pain that remain to be addressed and which reaches deep into the psyche of this community.”
The campaigner said the challenge they put to the Chief Constable is to "demonstrate beyond the rhetoric by actual deed and action”.
“This can be best achieved by immediately taking the operational decision to ban once and for all the use of plastic bullets.”
