Published Sunday, 13 September 2009
Judith Gillespie said the threat to her officers also remained high following two attempts by the Real IRA to kill a PSNI officer and his relatives in Derry last week.
Speaking in Belfast, Judith Gillespie said: "We don't say that lightly — it is a severe threat to police officers.
"If you look, for example, at what happened in Derry in the last couple of days, when a police officer from the area serving the community [and] their family was targeted, [it] was absolutely disgraceful."
Judith Gillespie also said the public in South Armagh helped the PSNI locate a 600lb bomb last week.
She said phone calls from the members of the public in the area provided detailed knowledge of the whereabouts of the device, which was found near the village of Forkhill and had a command wire, stretching across the border into the Irish Republic, attached to it.
Security sources said the bomb was one of the most sophisticated to have been assembled by any of the dissident terror groups in recent years.
They also confirmed reports that they were investigating whether a former veteran Provisional IRA bomb-maker from Belfast had defected to one of the dissident organisations and was helping it improve its bomb-making capability.
The bomb found near Forhill was discovered on Tuesday and defused by British army technical officers.
Police said it had been assembled by a group called Oglaigh na Eireann, a smaller dissident organisation led by a nucleus of ex-PIRA activists from East Tyrone, Armagh and Belfast.
The bomb attacks at the homes of a police officer's parents and sister in Derry were the work of the Real IRA.
It has targeted several Catholic police recruits to the PSNI over the last two years, and has also been responsible for at least six so-called punishment shootings in Derry over the last few months.