An historic perception of police intelligence as a dirty word is hampering the efforts of modern day detectives to bring paramilitaries to justice in the north, a senior commander has said. PSNI Assistant Chief Constable Will Kerr warned that republican and loyalist paramilitaries would continue to operate unless the flow of information from the communities they terrorise started to increase. Mr Kerr said too many people still held a very negative view of intelligence gathering practices, as they saw them through the lens of the Troubles, when contention surrounded the use of informers. [...]