Kathleen O'Toole

Chief Inspector of Northern Ireland speaks about human rights, job of police

By: Teresa Sheffield

Posted: 3/10/08

Human rights were at the heart of the speech given by Kathleen O'Toole last Wednesday at the UMKC School of Law, as a part of the Joseph Cohen lecture series.

"Human rights at the heart of policing, that's what [we're] there for, to protect human rights," O'Toole said.

O'Toole was the first female police commissioner in Boston from 2004-06 and has been a police officer for almost 30 years.

Currently, she is the Chief Inspector of the Garda Síochána Inspectorate (Guardian of the Peace) in Northern Ireland .

O'Toole spoke about her life and her work in Boston and Ireland.

She began with details about her college education, her degrees in political science and law and her subsequent move into the police force.

"My mother was horrified; she didn't even want me to have a career, let alone one as a cop ," O'Toole said.

She began as a patrol officer in 1979 and worked her way up to Police Commissioner.

O'Toole talked about how necessary it was that the police worked with the community - calling it a police service instead of a police force - and being proactive instead of reactive to crime.

As the Boston Police Commissioner, she helped develop a plan that lowered Boston's very high crime rate.

There were several key steps to the plan. The first main one was to work with the community and earn their trust, so they could work together to stop the small percentage of people who were causing such a big rate of crime.

The police asked community leaders what they thought could help lower crime. The police made a list of the 1,000 most at-risk kids on the street and went to their houses and talked to parents about making a plan to keep them alive. They also gave the kids something to do to keep them out of trouble, like after school activities, summer camps and jobs.

The second main thing they had to do was clean up the Boston police force.

They did this by breaking the boundaries within the different departments of the force so they could share information and work as a team. They also diversified the force so it matched the demographics of the city in both race and gender.

In Ireland, O'Toole used the same sort of plan to reduce the violent and dangerous situation in the country.

O'Toole also played an important role in coming up with the Belfast Agreement in 1998 that helped solve these problems.

This agreement illustrated 175 recommendations that would help bring about peace.

These recommendations are used all over the world as a model to other police departments.

With the help of the recommendations, Northern Ireland has lowered its crime rate immensely, diversified its cops and the police force has been unarmed since 1992.

O'Toole took questions after she finished her speech, and was asked what she thought of the recent college shootings.

"I think it's a frightening thing … the random acts of violence. … And I think we really need to come together as communities and figure out strategies, prevention strategies and as a last resort, response strategies," O'Toole said.

She used her work in the private sector as a security manager preventing work-related shootings as an example in her own life.

"In every instance there were clear signals, there were signs in advance that people either that people wanted to avoid or ignore or just didn't feel like getting involved, and unfortunately in some of the tragedies we've seen happen in recent years on college campuses and elsewhere, all of the signs were there," O'Toole said. "I think we really need a collaborative approach to that. The police alone will not resolve that problem, college administrators will not solve that problem alone, it has to be a collaborative approach. And you know, it has to really focus on prevention and intervention, and helping people who are crying out for help, who have all the tell-tale signs."

tsheffield@unews.com