Call for police chief to resign

。 10 May 2011 Last updated at 16:16 ET  Mr Maxwell received the Queen's Police Medal in 2008 The MP for Skipton and Ripon has called for the immediate resignation of North Yorkshire Police's chief constable.

Chief Constable Grahame Maxwell was given a final written warning after admitting disreputable conduct in a hearing on Tuesday.

Tory MP Julian Smith said the current situation was "not acceptable" and called for Mr Maxwell to step down.

A hearing found Mr Maxwell had assisted a relative in a police recruitment drive.

Mr Smith said: "Public life, I believe is about trust, and no more so than if you are leading a police force.

"It is looking after the interests of my constituents and thousands of other people across North Yorkshire. Having admitted that very grave issue, I believe he has to go."

'Undermined public confidence'

The police authority and Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) were involved in Mr Maxwell's hearing.

Lawyers for Mr Maxwell confirmed he had received a final written warning to remain in force for 18 months and "accepts that his conduct has been discreditable to the force and amounts to gross misconduct".

A statement issued by the legal team said he had "admitted an allegation that he had breached professional standards and thereby brought discredit upon and undermined public confidence in the police service".

The disciplinary panel met in secret, and Mr Smith has questioned why the hearing was held behind closed doors.

The police campaign hit the headlines when more than 200,000 people tried to get through to apply for 60 jobs last year.

'Set standards'

Mr Maxwell was filmed manning the phone lines himself but the volume of calls caused the phone system to crash and many potential applicants complained they could not get through.

He became North Yorkshire's chief constable in 2007, joining from South Yorkshire Police, where he had been a deputy since 2005.

He is thought to be the first chief constable to have faced gross misconduct charges in more than 30 years.

The IPCC said Mr Maxwell admitted assisting a member of his extended family and also a relative of his Deputy Chief Constable, Adam Briggs.

Mr Briggs was found at a hearing in December to have helped a relative get a job during the recruitment exercise when he received "management advice".

IPCC Commissioner Nicholas Long said: "The Chief Constable and his deputy are the two most senior officers in the force and are supposed to lead by example and set the standards for others to follow."

Police begin seat belt crackdown

10 May 2011 Last updated at 19:44 ET  Anyone caught not wearing a seatbelt faces a fine of up to ￡500 Police across Scotland are taking part in a day of action targeting people who do not wear a car seat belt.

It comes after recent figures suggested one person in every three killed in a car accident was not wearing a seat belt.

Since April last year, Scotland's eight police forces said more than 3,700 seat belt offences had been detected.

Any motorist caught not wearing a seat belt could face a fine of up to ￡500.

The campaign, aimed at reducing casualties on the roads, coincides with the launch of the UN Decade of Action for Road Safety.

Throughout the campaign police said they would also focus on drivers who ignored speed limits.

Ch Supt Charlie Common of Lothian and Borders Police said: "Over the next 10 years we will be working towards stringent targets in relation to casualty reduction and the type of action we intend to take forms part of that work.

"Once again, extra patrols will be evident and I would encourage all road users to obey the speed limits and take the essential precaution of ensuring that seat belts are worn."

Burkina Faso Police Join in Popular Unrest

 

DAKAR, Senegal — Police officers in Burkina Faso joined a growing wave of popular unrest on Thursday, firing their weapons in the air and shooting tear gas as discontent over high prices, low wages and the 24-year-rule of President Blaise Compaoré spread in the landlocked West African nation.

Officers poured into the streets in the central district of the capital, Ouagadougou, on Thursday morning, according to a local journalist, Paul Miki Rouamba, who witnessed the scene. He said they had fired off shots around the central police station and roared through the capital on motorcycles to express their discontent over low salaries and some of the force’s commanders.

The police in other cities of the impoverished, Colorado-size nation of 16 million also fired into the air in a show of anger at economic conditions, according to news organizations in Burkina Faso, including in the country’s second largest city, Bobo-Dioulasso. The day before, merchants in the city of Koudougou burned down several buildings associated with the local government to protest a crackdown on unpaid rent in the municipal market.

The police are the latest group to exhibit frustration in Burkina Faso, joining students, soldiers and merchants in the tightly controlled, one-party state run by Mr. Compaoré ever since a coup d’état that saw the demise of his former army comrade, in the late 1980s.

Mr. Compaoré was re-elected with over 80 percent of the vote last fall, amid opposition complaints of an unfair election, and his rule has mostly gone unchallenged in a country where 80 percent of the population relies on subsistence agriculture and three quarters are illiterate. That dynamic, analysts suggest — low educational levels in one of the world’s poorest countries — makes a North African-style revolt against a long-ruling autocrat unlikely.

But with the political crisis this year in a neighboring state, Ivory Coast, on which Burkina Faso is economically dependent — thousands migrate there for work, and most goods pass through the port in Abidjan, Ivory Coast’s main city — the country’s economy has suffered and social discontent has mushroomed.

In February, students demonstrated after the death of a colleague in police custody, and five were killed. In April, soldiers rioted in the capital, looting businesses, hotels and the homes of government officials because they were unhappy over the prosecution of army comrades. Mr. Compaoré, a former army captain, dissolved his government and named the former editor of the state newspaper as prime minister. He did not, though, name any opposition figures to the new cabinet, and the unrest has continued.

Analysts say there is no obvious link between the various protesting groups in the country except general discontent. “They seem to be somewhat separate strands,” said one Western expert on the country, who asked not to be named so as not to jeopardize his current position. Everybody is angry at high prices, the expert said, “and almost nobody has confidence in the government. If the military stuff isn’t settled, everything else is up for grabs.”

The opposition has called for a large-scale demonstration in the capital on Saturday.

 

Palestinian Police Kill Israeli Visiting West Bank Holy Site

 

JERUSALEM — The Palestinian police shot and killed one Israeli and wounded four others early Sunday after the Israelis surreptitiously visited a Jewish holy site inside a Palestinian-controlled area, officials on both sides said.

The shooting occurred outside Joseph’s Tomb in the West Bank city of Nablus after three carloads of religious Israeli Jews visited the site to pray, without coordinating their plans through the Israeli Army. Twice-monthly trips to the tomb have been organized with army escorts for the past four years without incident.

Palestinian security officials said they were questioning the Palestinian police officers who fired their weapons during the episode. The dead man was identified as Ben-Yosef Livnat, a 24-year-old father of four from Jerusalem and a nephew of Limor Livnat, the minister of culture and sport from the Likud Party in Israel. Mr. Livnat grew up on a settlement near Nablus, where his parents still live.

After the shooting, Palestinian youths set fires outside the tomb. Israeli and Palestinian security officials extinguished them. Later, at a funeral procession for Mr. Livnat that began at the nearby settlement, dozens of masked Israeli settlers attacked Palestinians along the way, smashing their cars and wounding a boy.

The procession ended at a grave site on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem where Ms. Livnat, the minister and aunt of the dead man, called his killing “a cold-blooded murder.”

A statement from Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who is responsible for Israeli security in the West Bank, also used the term “murder,” adding, “No failure of coordination can justify an event of this kind and firing on innocent people.” Mr. Barak instructed the army to investigate and demanded that the Palestinians do the same and that they take all necessary measures against those who fired.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the killing as well.

The Palestinian governor of Nablus, Jibril al-Bakri, told Israel Radio that the shooting was a result of lack of coordination between the worshipers and the Israeli Army. He said that Palestinian police officers who were on a regular patrol shot a warning into the air before firing at the cars. He stressed that the shooting was a mistake.

An Israeli military spokesman said at day’s end that Israeli and Palestinian security officials had met and exchanged what they knew and were continuing their inquiries.

The Palestinians, he said, accused the Israeli worshipers of having thrown rocks at the police before the shooting began.

David Ha’Ivri, a Jewish settler spokesman who is involved in coordinating visits to Joseph’s Tomb with the Israeli Army, said some worshipers refused to visit in this way and sneaked in on their own.

“We do not endorse that,” Mr. Ha’Ivri said. “We call on people to be responsible.” He added that the organized visits to the tomb were nonetheless still too infrequent to accommodate all who wished to go. Most of those who sneak in are members of the Breslov Hasidic sect who live in Jerusalem, he and others said.

The military spokesman said that on Jewish holidays — it is Passover now — it was not uncommon for some devout Jews to sneak into holy sites under Palestinian control. If caught by the Palestinians, they are nearly always handed over to the Israelis without violence, he said.

Many Jews believe that Joseph’s Tomb is the final burial place of the son of Jacob, the biblical patriarch.

A spokesman for the Israeli rescue service, Magen David Adom, said that the cars had been fired upon after visiting the tomb. He said that apart from Mr. Livnat, who died of a gunshot wound to the head, two others in a second car were evacuated by helicopter. Others were lightly wounded and treated on the spot.

 

Admirers Call It Art, but the Police Call It a Problem

 

An exhibition of street art that opened last week has been responsible, the authorities say, for a new wave of graffiti on buildings, lampposts and mailboxes in downtown Los Angeles, forcing a fresh crackdown on an activity that the police thought they had brought under control. And it has put them in the awkward position of trying to arrest people for doing something that is being celebrated by the city’s cultural establishment.

On another level, the exhibition, “Art in the Streets,” has fueled a 40-year dispute about the nature of graffiti and the appropriateness of a mainstream arts institution, like the Geffen Contemporary wing of MOCA, conveying legitimacy on an activity that some people see as nothing short of vandalism.

“It sounds like every nitwit around is down there trying to take advantage of these admirers of graffiti,” said William J. Bratton, who served as police chief in Los Angeles and commissioner in New York and in both places made eradicating street graffiti a top priority.

Mr. Bratton said he was not going to call on the museum to shut the show down — but he would never visit it. “What was expected to occur has occurred in the surrounding areas,” he said.

A French tagger known as Space Invader was detained and released by the authorities after climbing down a building near the museum this week. The police now believe he was responsible for a tag later found there and are trying to find him again.

Jack Richter, a senior lead officer with the Los Angeles Police Department, said that was one of a number of graffiti episodes in the neighborhood of Little Tokyo that he argued had been, at the least, encouraged by “Art in the Streets.” He vowed to prosecute anyone caught defacing public space, even those whose work might have made it to the big leagues of the Geffen.

“They will go to jail, sir,” he said. “This not a ticket. I will put them in jail myself.”

Jeffrey Deitch, the director of MOCA, said that reports of tagging linked to the show were exaggerated, and that the museum was ready to send a crew of workers to paint over any graffiti found in the neighborhood.

“It’s actually very minimal,” said Mr. Deitch, and paying too much attention to it was only going “to encourage vandalism where the exhibition discourages it by emphasizing the positive direction that young people can take to channel their talents.”

The exhibition, a year in the making, fills 40,586 square feet and is the most ambitious of its type, museum officials said. As such, it suggests a final validation of graffiti as an art form.

Forty years ago, Taki 183, a graffiti writer in New York, became a symbol of urban life run amok as his distinctive tag turned up on subway cars, bridges, schoolyards and walls across the five boroughs. Taki’s tag is on prominent display here, and the artist himself turned up for the opening. The exhibition includes a sweep of street artists, including Keith Haring, Shepard Fairey, Chaz Bojórquez, Henry Chalfant and Banksy.

The show itself appears to be a huge success. On Thursday morning, a line snaked up the sidewalk waiting for the doors to open at 11. By noon, the huge expanse was filled with people examining the galleries in an atmosphere of intense interest.

“I was skeptical before I came, but I think graffiti like this is art,” said Eric Watson, 42, a filmmaker. “Look at the way kids here are engaging in it.”

Cynthia Miltenberger, 39, an arts educator, scoffed at the notion that this had anything to do with what was going on outside — or in fact, that there was anything wrong with graffiti. “It’s a way of encouraging people to express themselves,” she said.

Niels Kantor, an art dealer with a gallery on Melrose Avenue, said: “People have to realize that art has to start somewhere. Cavemen drew on walls.”

In many ways, the battle in Los Angeles reflects what has been a recurring argument in cities around the world: Is graffiti a legitimate form of art? Should society be trying to quash it or validate it with exhibits like this? Indeed, the conflicting sentiments could be found right inside the museum the other day, where graffiti over sinks in the men’s room had been painted over.

Mr. Deitch said the exhibition was designed to present graffiti in a historical and critical context, showing the chronology of the development of street art and the connections between various artists. “I want people to look at this and understand this is an important contribution to contemporary art,” he said.

Officer Richter said he had been over to look at the exhibit a few times.

“I think graffiti is so yesterday,” he said.

 

Sarasota Police Seek Clues After Tourists Are Killed

Police officials are investigating how the young men, James Cooper, 25, and James T. Kouzaris, 24, got from the bar in downtown Sarasota to the public housing project, where they died on a narrow, one-way street. The police found the men after receiving a 911 call.

The two British tourists did not have a rental car and were staying with Mr. Cooper’s parents in a condominium on nearby Longboat Key on the Gulf Coast.

Shawn Tyson, a 16-year-old dropout, was charged Sunday with two counts of first-degree murder. The shooting took place one day after Mr. Tyson was released from a juvenile facility after his arrest on charges of aggravated assault with a handgun, police officials said. Mr. Tyson was accused of shooting out a car window and spent eight days in detention.

Mr. Tyson, who last year dropped out of the eighth grade in a school for children with special needs, lives two blocks from the murder scene. Prosecutors said they intended to try him as an adult.

“From what I can pull together in the past few days, I don’t think we have ever had a tourist murdered, much less two at the same time,” Kelly Kirschner, the mayor of Sarasota, said Tuesday. “It’s critically tragic.”

The Sarasota police chief, Mikel Hollaway, said at a news conference that he believed Mr. Cooper and Mr. Kouzaris were in the neighborhood voluntarily. No drugs or weapons were found on them. The police are circulating photos of the men in Smokin’ Joe’s bar in downtown Sarasota, where they went for drinks, in the hopes that someone will recognize them and come forward with information.

As the police pieced together details of the killings, Mr. Cooper’s parents flew home to Britain.

Mr. Cooper and Mr. Kouzaris graduated from the University of Sheffield together. A tennis coach, Mr. Cooper, or Coops as he was called, was a leader in Sheffield, his friend Alex Porter said in an e-mail. “He was possibly the funniest and most quick-witted person I have had the pleasure of knowing,” Mr. Porter said, adding that the two had plans to go to Wimbledon this summer.

Mr. Kouzaris, a rugby player and would-be urban planner who was called Jam, was no different. His Facebook page is studded with Web sites for rough road, high-mountain biking. He had studied town planning at the university and had recently moved from Taiwan and joined Mr. Cooper for a three-week vacation. “Amazing” was Mr. Kouzaris’s favorite word and his outlook on life, Mr. Porter said.

Facing a blizzard of harsh British press coverage, Sarasota officials are trying to dispel notions that the city is blighted by crime. These are the first two murders this year in the city of 55,000.

“The British media is portraying this as crime run amok, and that is not true,” Mr. Kirschner said, adding that the city has worked to address the higher crime rate on Sarasota’s north side. “It doesn’t matter where you are in 26 square miles of the city of Sarasota, you should have every expectation you and your family should be safe.”

 

Case Against Tunisian Police Officer is Dismissed

CAIRO -- A Tunisian court on Tuesday dismissed the case against a policewoman accused of slapping the Tunisian street vendor whose subsequent self-immolation set off a wave of revolts across Tunisia and the Arab world, Tunisia’s official news agency, TAP, reported.

The street vendor, Mohamed Bouazizi, 26, set himself on fire after a confrontation with the police officer, Fedia Hamdi, who had confiscated his fruit and slapped him in the face, according to other vendors who witnessed the incident in December. Mr. Bouazizi’s act of desperation fueled public outrage and led to a month-long uprising that finally toppled the authoritarian president, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, and forced him to flee the country on Jan. 14. It also turned Mr. Bouazizi into a symbol of defiance against state oppression and systematic police violations, which inspired similar acts of self-immolation in Egypt, Algeria and Mauritania.

According to the Tunisian news agency, Mr. Bouazizi’s mother “withdrew her complaint, ” and Ms. Hamdi denied the charges. The court’s ruling comes at a time of uncertainty for Tunisia as the new government investigates accusations of corruption and the excessive use of force against protesters.

 

Sarasota Police Seek Clues After Tourists Are Killed

 

Police officials are investigating how the young men, James Cooper, 25, and James T. Kouzaris, 24, got from the bar in downtown Sarasota to the public housing project, where they died on a narrow, one-way street. The police found the men after receiving a 911 call.

The two British tourists did not have a rental car and were staying with Mr. Cooper’s parents in a condominium on nearby Longboat Key on the Gulf Coast.

Shawn Tyson, a 16-year-old dropout, was charged Sunday with two counts of first-degree murder. The shooting took place one day after Mr. Tyson was released from a juvenile facility after his arrest on charges of aggravated assault with a handgun, police officials said. Mr. Tyson was accused of shooting out a car window and spent eight days in detention.

Mr. Tyson, who last year dropped out of the eighth grade in a school for children with special needs, lives two blocks from the murder scene. Prosecutors said they intended to try him as an adult.

“From what I can pull together in the past few days, I don’t think we have ever had a tourist murdered, much less two at the same time,” Kelly Kirschner, the mayor of Sarasota, said Tuesday. “It’s critically tragic.”

The Sarasota police chief, Mikel Hollaway, said at a news conference that he believed Mr. Cooper and Mr. Kouzaris were in the neighborhood voluntarily. No drugs or weapons were found on them. The police are circulating photos of the men in Smokin’ Joe’s bar in downtown Sarasota, where they went for drinks, in the hopes that someone will recognize them and come forward with information.

As the police pieced together details of the killings, Mr. Cooper’s parents flew home to Britain.

Mr. Cooper and Mr. Kouzaris graduated from the University of Sheffield together. A tennis coach, Mr. Cooper, or Coops as he was called, was a leader in Sheffield, his friend Alex Porter said in an e-mail. “He was possibly the funniest and most quick-witted person I have had the pleasure of knowing,” Mr. Porter said, adding that the two had plans to go to Wimbledon this summer.

Mr. Kouzaris, a rugby player and would-be urban planner who was called Jam, was no different. His Facebook page is studded with Web sites for rough road, high-mountain biking. He had studied town planning at the university and had recently moved from Taiwan and joined Mr. Cooper for a three-week vacation. “Amazing” was Mr. Kouzaris’s favorite word and his outlook on life, Mr. Porter said.

Facing a blizzard of harsh British press coverage, Sarasota officials are trying to dispel notions that the city is blighted by crime. These are the first two murders this year in the city of 55,000.

“The British media is portraying this as crime run amok, and that is not true,” Mr. Kirschner said, adding that the city has worked to address the higher crime rate on Sarasota’s north side. “It doesn’t matter where you are in 26 square miles of the city of Sarasota, you should have every expectation you and your family should be safe.”

 

Yemen Police and Protesters Clash as Deal Is Sought to End Political Crisis

The violence came as the Gulf Cooperation Council, a six-nation regional group, sought to broker an end to the political crisis. Yemen’s Saba news agency said government officials were meeting with the council in Abu Dhabi after similar meetings with opposition representatives on Sunday.

Gunfire erupted in the capital on Tuesday as government supporters threw rocks and beat protesters with sticks while security forces used tear gas and a water cannon to push back a march in the center of the city. “First they used the water cannon on us, then tear gas, then as we were running away they shot at us,” said Talal al-Azany, a protester who works with a local human rights organization.

One protester died of a gunshot wound to the head, and doctors said 10 others were wounded; it was unclear whether security forces or plainclothesmen had opened fire. A witness said a protester threw a gasoline bomb at the water cannon.

At a mosque turned medical clinic inside the demonstration area in Sana, about 100 men lay on the floor, some wounded, some beaten, some suffering from tear gas. “You see how our government works,” said Dahan Ali, an older protester using crutches after being shot in the leg during a clash on Sunday

Canisters of the tear gas used against protesters in Yemen show expiration dates as many as 10 years past. Many protesters have severe reactions to the gas, including seizures and foaming at the mouth. Yemeni doctors believe that these reactions prove that the gas has some sort of nerve agent in it, though the leftover canisters bear labels saying CN gas and CS gas, used for crowd control.

On Sunday night, one man had to be held down to the floor by four others as his body spasmed. “The victims convulse in ways that is not normal for tear gas,” said a doctor at the makeshift clinic, Tarek Noman. He said he treated exposure with Pralidoxime, a medicine used to counter nerve gas and phosphorus pesticides.

In Taiz, the violence broke out as demonstrators tried to march along a central street and were confronted by security forces, who began shooting after protesters began to burn barricades in the street, Reuters reported. Taiz is home to the country’s longest sit-in, with protesters claiming a central area since mid-February and demanding the departure of President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

A video posted online Tuesday showed a member of the security forces firing from a moving car in Taiz, though it was unclear when the video was taken. Protesters there have said that both security forces and plainclothes government supporters have repeatedly shot at them over the last two weeks.

According to a plan backed by Western nations, Mr. Saleh would hand over presidential powers to his vice president and then leave office a month later under a guarantee of immunity from prosecution for himself and his family. Presidential elections would be held after 60 days, in accordance with the country’s Constitution. The plan is seen as a compromise between what the ruling party and the opposition have been seeking.

Yemen’s opposition coalition, known as the Joint Meetings Parties, has indicated its support for the plan; Mr. Saleh has yet to respond.

A high-ranking Yemeni official, who spoke anonymously because he was not authorized to speak to the news media, said Mr. Saleh was seeking a guarantee that leading figures from the opposition, notably Maj. Gen. Ali Mohsin al-Ahmar, would leave Yemen for a set period of time if Mr. Saleh agreed to step down. The official described such an arrangement as a tribal method of settling scores and meant to ensure that the president saved face.

Youth protesters are planning marches for Wednesday in cities throughout the country in memory of the first protester killed in this uprising, Mohammed al-Alwani, who died Feb. 16 in the southern port city Aden.

The United Nations Security Council was scheduled to meet on Tuesday over the worsening political situation in Yemen, a country riven by tribal conflict in the north and a separatist movement in the south that has become a haven for Al Qaeda. Counterterrorism officials say the unrest has allowed the terrorist group to operate more freely and plot attacks against Western targets.

Laura Kasinof reported from Sana, and J. David Goodman from New York.

 

Crown to appeal police acquittal

 12 April 2011 Last updated at 04:13 ET  Ch Insp Tom Forrester was cleared at Aberdeen Sheriff Court last year The Crown is to appeal the acquittal of the former head of road policing for Grampian on dangerous driving allegations.

Ch Insp Tom Forrester was cleared at Aberdeen Sheriff Court last year.

It was claimed he had encouraged a colleague to drive dangerously in an unmarked police car with the siren and lights activated.

The vehicle they were travelling in was involved in a collision on the way to Aberdeen Airport in November 2008.

The crash happened on the B977 Belhelvie to Dyce road in Aberdeenshire.

The trial heard how Ch Insp Forrester and another colleague, Insp James Wood, were running late for a flight to Birmingham to attend a conference.

Ch Insp Forrester was further charged with violating the trust and duty of the force by failing to report the incident.

But Sheriff Kenneth Stewart cleared him of both charges.

Pc Ashley Forbes was found guilty of careless driving and failing to stop, but was given an absolute discharge.

The grounds of the Crown's appeal have not yet been made public.

Three judges will hear the appeal in Edinburgh next month.

 

Police defend Newry alert cordon

 11 April 2011 Last updated at 05:37 ET Hundreds of motorists drove past the van containing the bomb on Friday after cones cordoning it off were removed A senior police officer has defended the PSNI's handing of a security alert in Newry, which led to the discovery of a 500lb bomb.

The PSNI were criticised after hundreds of motorists drove past the van containing the bomb after cones cordoning it off were removed.

Chief Superintendent Alasdair Robinson said a full cordon was put in place when the suspect vehicle was located.

He said police were hampered by two "ambiguous" bomb warnings.

Mr Robinson said they had hindered their search for the bomb.

"No location"

"The warning came in to a local charity and it said the following: 'This is the IRA, there is a bomb under the underpass'," he said.

"No location was given and there was nine seconds of recording.

"The previous one, the first one said: 'This is the IRA, we've planted a bomb on the underpass at the Berliss Road and it is to go off in 45 minutes'.

"Now there is no Berliss Road on the M1. The M1 goes from Belfast to the west.

"The M1 of course, is the A1 / M1 which is the national north south route, so that was the level of ambiguity."

He said police did not at that stage know where the bomb was.

"It wasn't until almost an hour later that we could confirm that we had a suspect vehicle. At that point, we put a full cordon in place," he added.

Police cordon breached

"We closed the roads, both with police and the Roads Service, who kindly helped us with that. We had the whole scene completely secure and locked down for the evening."

Chief Superintendent Robinson said some members of the public had "breached" the police cordon.

"You can't blame all of the people who drove past because they came to what they thought was an open road," he said.

"We checked the cordon and we put police back in to close them down."

He said the PSNI would review their use of signage.

"It is not part of anyone's plan to allow any member of the public to go anywhere near what was a suspect device.

"Sophisticated and substantial"

"The police were on the ground but as far as we were concerned the cordon was complete."

Police said the bomb, which was left on the Belfast to Dublin road, was "sophisticated and substantial".

The Secretary of State Owen Paterson said the community was "fed up" with the recent spate of alerts and condemned the incident.

However, he refused to be drawn on how the police dealt with the bomb and said police handling of the security alert was an "operational matter."

"There are questions that need to be answered and I will put them to the chief constable and the justice minister when I meet with them next week," Mr Paterson said.

"I am not going to comment until I have spoken to them."

Acting Policing Board chairman Brian Rea said the police had done all they could to make the area safe.

"I had a briefing on Sunday from the district commander in the area who reassured me they were doing all in their power to keep that road closed," he said.

"The police operate in that area under a constant threat. We have heard in the past where a device has been planted as a come on or trap.

"Police have to be extremely careful when they enter into this type of situation and often they have to leave it some time before it is safe for them to do so."

The alert, which started on Thursday night, was less than a week since the murder of PSNI constable Ronan Kerr in Omagh, County Tyrone.

Police believe that the van containing the bomb was abandoned in the underpass because of increased police activity in the wake of the murder last Saturday.

Army bomb experts carried out several controlled explosions on the vehicle on Friday night.