John Hermon | Led N. Ireland police, 79
Sir John Hermon, 79, who commanded Northern Ireland's police force through many of its worst years of conflict with the IRA, has died.
Sir John Hermon, 79, who commanded Northern Ireland's police force through many of its worst years of conflict with the IRA, has died.
Mr. Hermon's family and the British government announced his death. He had Alzheimer's disease and died Thursday in a nursing home in the Belfast suburb of Bangor.
He joined the Royal Ulster Constabulary in 1950 and rose quickly through the ranks of the force, which was drawn chiefly from Northern Ireland's British Protestant majority. He served as the RUC chief constable from 1980-1989.
During his command, Mr. Hermon saw more than 120 of his officers killed by the Irish Republican Army - and defended his own force's controversial tactics in confronting the underground group.
Mr. Hermon faced two still-secret English investigations into the RUC's 1982 killings of six unarmed people in apparent ambushes - a tactic that immediately followed the IRA's killing of three officers with a booby-trap bomb.
The "shoot to kill" scandal centered on allegations that a special police unit authorized by Mr. Hermon was seeking to kill anti-British militants rather than arrest them.
- AP