Adams Criticises Police As Officers Hurt

Within hours of an attack on police in his constituency, the Sinn Féin West Belfast MP Gerry Adams has criticised the PSNI's reaction to both anti-social behaviour and to a murder probe.

Three police officers were injured in violence in west Belfast which saw two officers punched on the head and a third hit with a glass in a fracas outside a pub on the Falls Road.

It happened at about 1.30am on Sunday when officers were checking licensing laws at the bar when a crowd of about 50 people attacked them with bottles and glasses. None of the officers was seriously injured. No arrests were made. Police said investigations were ongoing.

Mr Adams later met the PSNI District Commander for the area on Sunday afternoon to focus on the murder of Seamus Fox and wider concerns about what he said was the PSNI's "inadequate response to anti-social behaviour in other parts of the constituency".

Mr Adams was accompanied by Sue Ramsay MLA and Councillor Gerard O Neill, as well as Gerry McConville from the Upper Falls Community Safety Forum.

He said later than Sinn Féin is concerned to ensure that this murder inquiry is thorough and that the Fox family are kept informed of all developments and that there is also a widespread concern at the less than adequate response of the PSNI to anti-social behaviour in west Belfast, particularly in the Lenadoon, the Falls and St. James areas.

"Sinn Féin will be pressing for greater co-operations and more effective programmes of work to tackle anti-social problems," Adams said afterwards, while making no mention of the attack on police on the Falls Road a few hours earlier.

Meanwhile an 18-year-old man appeared in court charged with the murder of Seamus Fox over the weekend.

Belfast Magistrates Court heard that Gerard Connor, of Glenveagh Drive could be connected with the charge.

Altrhough a defence solicitor said Mr Connor would be strenuously contesting the murder allegations, no application for bail was made.

The SDLP West Belfast Assemblyman Alex Attwood, has also joined the debate and said the brutal beating of Seamus Fox on waste ground behind Woodbourne police station had left his family - and the wider community - asking many questions.

He said that the PSNI has questions to answer over the murder of a west Belfast father-of-eight who was beaten to death within yards of a police station.

(BMcC/GK)