'Old-school policing' is paying dividends on Cork's streets, says new Garda boss

There are currently 11 high-visibility, single-person, garda patrols running in Cork city centre during the daytime, and six two-person patrols working on each of the night-time beats.

From 8am to 4am, there are frontline, visible gardaí on the streets of Cork, both on the southside and on the northside, focused on the city centre.

It is, according to Garda Chief Superintendent Colm Noonan, the most old-school form of policing imaginable. Since being introduced in Cork before Christmas, it has paid dividends.

“This is a return to traditional policing delivery models, where you’ve got visible guards on the street, and the simple fact is that if you’ve got a garda on a beat in a certain area, he or she will get to know the businesses, get to know the criminals that are operating there, and will start identifying and detecting crime there,” said Mr Noonan.

“My job as chief in Cork is to sustain that, that takes resources every single day,” he added, speaking during his first interview since taking over as the head of policing in the Cork city garda division last December, replacing the retiring Tom Myers.

Before taking up the top job in the city, the Fermoy native had served for four years in charge of the Garda National Protective Services Bureau, and he previously served in Dublin and Templemore, also working as a superintendent in Midleton and Gurranabraher.

Mr Noonan said the introduction of high-visibility policing has been met with a warm welcome by most in the city, although it has brought challenges too.

“The purpose of those gardaí on the beat is primarily to prevent anti-social behaviour, target street crime, and then be in a position to respond to crime in the city centre.

“What we’re seeing on the ground are things like thefts, assaults, criminal damage, possession of drugs, and public order offences, the sort of crimes we would expect to see in any city centre.

“The purpose of high-visibility policing is to intervene and to see can we detect more of those, can we prevent them, and can we prosecute in respect of those crimes, and that’s what we’re seeing.”

This has led to a “marked but not unexpected” increase in reported street crimes across the city centre, both northside and southside, but the chief superintendent said he saw that as “a really positive way of delivering an effective police service” to the people of Cork.

“Rather than those crimes not being reported at all, not to mind detected, not to mind prosecuted, we’ve created a space where people are confident that, if they do report a crime, there’ll be a high-visibility beat garda in attendance and able to deal with that crime.”

Increased detection rates in the city centre have also resulted in a displacement of street-level crimes to formerly quieter areas.

Mr Noonan said that gardaí are addressing this.

“The impact is that people who were engaged in criminal activity will identify that, if they can’t do it in the city centre, they will do it somewhere else,” he said.

“The net impact is that places like Blackpool Shopping Centre, Wilton Shopping Centre, and Mahon Point Shopping Centre, and areas of Cork city adjacent to the city centre but not in the centre are seeing increased activity in respect of that street-level crime. Particularly around the sale and supply of drugs, particularly around thefts.”

Retail thefts can be addressed “a little bit easier” in shopping centres, he said, because they are enclosed environments and have their own security obligations.

However, gardaí and communities in those areas have reported an increase in street-level drug-dealing and possession in areas where it was traditionally not seen. That, he said, was not being ignored.

“The whole purpose of being able to respond to this is that we put in place covert and overt operations to actually target that criminal activity in those areas,” he added.

“While the people of Cork might not see it as overtly as a high-visibility patrol on Patrick Street, my message is that there is a very dedicated, sustained, and focused garda operation up and running to target those activities in those other areas.

“There is no question that the residents and businesspeople of every street in Cork would love to see a visible guard every day of the week.

“It’s just not realistic or possible, so we have to tailor our policing response.

“However, you don’t tailor your response once at the start of the year and just leave it like that, we are constantly looking to see how to improve that response.”

Mr Noonan said the high-visibility beats are currently being reviewed to assess whether resources might be better applied in the city centre, and outside of it, to better target criminal activity.

With the high-visibility policing programme only beginning in the first week of December, audited crime figures are not yet available for publication, but “significant increases” have been recorded in thefts, assaults, criminal damage, possession of drugs, and public order offences across the city centre.

“All of these are significant increases, but also positive increases, because these are crimes that our people are detecting,” Mr Noonan said.

“The experience with high-visibility policing in Dublin is that they saw exactly those types of increases.

“So we were expecting them to rise, but it will bottom out, because when you get a rise as with the push of those criminal activities to other areas, those figures will drop.”

Despite the allocation of 36 “probationers” — garda graduates — and 12 transfers to the city last November, the two most recent graduations from Templemore have only seen two trainees assigned to Cork city in February and one in May.

Asked if he was disappointed at this, Mr Noonan said he would not use that word, but he acknowledged that having to deal with retirements, resignations, and transfers is a constant challenge.

“We know what we need to continue to police the city, and I’m not at that figure, so we depend on the continued support of the commissioner and the minister to keep allocating new probationers and transfers into the city, just to keep that on an upward trend,” he said.

Returning to the subject of high-visibility policing, he said the ability to meet a garda on the beat has made all the difference in the city, and that has been appreciated by gardaí as much as it is by the public.

“I meet with business associations and various community groups, and they all say it’s great to have that level of visibility, the ability to have a cup of coffee with someone, or just say hello, and that is a connection we are working hard to maintain."