Supt Gordon McCalmont speaking to the media at Strand Road police station this afternoon
Superintendent Gordon McCalmont voiced his “anger and frustration” over what he described as a “challenging’ two days in Derry.
On Saturday night, a bomb inside a hijacked car belonging to a pizza delivery driver exploded outside the courthouse in Derry’s Bishop Street.
Then on Monday, police had to deal with three further incidents of hoax devices left in two hijacked vehicles in the Creggan and an abandoned Asda delivery van on Northland Road.
The scale of the threat forced ‘gold’ police commanders to deploy extra Tactical Support Team units in Derry along with covert surveillance units to counter the threat.
Speaking this afternoon at Derry’s Strand Road police station, Supt McCalmont said: “We’ve seen a bomb explode in the heart of the community and yesterday we seen disruption with vehicles hijacked and left which has impacted on family lives.
“My own personal emotions are of anger and frustration in terms of the level of harm, the level of fear and disruption inflicted upon this proud community.
“Workers’ rights, human rights, democracy, all things that this community is built on have been massively eroded over this past couple of days.”
The Derry police commander also reassured the community that resources are in place to deal with the current situation and said that throughout yesterday police officers continued to deal with reports of other crimes.
In total, he said, the call management centre at Maydown received close to 200 calls for service including reports of assault, road traffic collisions and domestic-related incidents.
“Our focus as an organisation is on keeping people safe and I want to reassure the community that we are heavily invested in delivering a policing operation that minimises the risks of such incidents, not only now but into the future,” he added.
Four men arrested on Sunday over the bomb attack have been released unconditionally.
A fifth man, aged 50 and who was also arrested over the attack, remains in custody at the serious crime suite at Musgrave PSNI station in Belfast.
He is also being questioned under section 41 of the Terrorism Act over the robbery of a substantial amount of cash from a van driver in Meadowbank Avenue in the city last Tuesday.
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