Crime will not be defeated by temporary stop-gap solutions
The 1998 movie wasn’t a box office hit, but it gained a strong cult following in the ensuing years.
I watched it on Netflix, and while I won’t spoil things by going into the plot here, the message of this film - to me anyway - is that evil never goes away. It just continually moves. It side-steps. It slithers around, taking advantage of the weaknesses in the system, and waits for the next opportunity.
Fallen boasts a superlative cast - Denzel Washington, Donald Sutherland, John Goodman and James Gandolfini.
Near the beginning of the film, a vicious killer sits in the gas chamber awaiting execution. As witnesses look on and the poison gas surrounds him, the grinning criminal uses his dying breath to sing Time Is On My Side. Despite his death, it emerges, the evil continues unabated.
News that garda management is dipping into a €10 million fund from the government to provide extra overtime and increased patrols in Dublin’s crime-ridden city centre, reminded me of Fallen.
Garda HQ has promised an enhanced visible garda presence at now notorious locations around the city centre, like O’Connell Street and the infamous Liffey Boardwalk.
Great.
But...
Meanwhile, the problem of anti-social and criminal behaviour continues unabated everywhere else in the country.
No new millions being pumped into crime-fighting anywhere else, I notice, so the countrywide problem remains.
Garda recruitment targets are being missed. In May, it emerged that the 2023 recruitment campaign attracted fewer than half the numbers who applied to become a member of the force last year.
This should come as no surprise to anybody because the Garda Representative Association (GRA) has repeatedly highlighted the issues which have been eroding the morale and the crime-fighting ability of the Garda Síochána for years. Major issues: pay and conditions.
The fact, for example, that gardaí have to get permission from some Central Control Unit to step outside the station door and do their job.
The fact that, as the GRA has warned, members on the frontline are under what a GRA official described as “more or less constant attack” from criminals, something which is reflected in a reported 20% increase in assaults.
Another factor: gardaí involved in car pursuits are being “stood down”, which criminals are of course, aware of, and which is putting the road network at the mercy of out-of-control car-borne gangsters with no regard for the law-abiding motorist.
The organisation is being both hampered and hammered by poor pay, poor pensions, and appalling working conditions.
As the GRA has pointed out, members also live under the unrelenting stress of constantly having to look over your shoulder to see if GSOC is coming at you.
There’s the stress of all these seemingly endless suspensions of Garda members around the country, some of whom, it’s reported, are being left for years in limbo.
All of it is a huge disincentive to joining the force.
All of it is a huge disincentive to remaining in the force.
And the government is doing absolutely nothing about this creeping rot, which is spreading not just through the Garda Síochána, but through every aspect of the public service; in education, health, the army, the navy.
It’s not just the current lot, by the way.
Successive governments have failed to deal with it.
Thing is, though, the current government appears particularly unconcerned about solving domestic problems.
Our government’s sole priority appears to be international optics; how best, for example to house, feed, educate and provide spending money to the latest tranche of the seemingly endless stream of refugees and asylum-seekers arriving in this country while crime spirals out of control.
Irish people are homeless and young adults face the choice of either emigrating because of the lack of accommodation or returning home to live with their parents.
Families cannot find a GP because so many have emigrated or retired and the remaining practices are struggling to meet the existing demand.
Patients are dreading the day their GP retires because the chances are they may not be able to find another one.
It’s a big problem - gardaí, nurses, doctors, teachers, soldiers and naval personnel are leaving either their professions or their country in droves because of poor pay, poor working conditions and a serious crisis in morale.
The Garda Síochána in particular is in the middle of a perfect storm, battered by both a recruitment crisis and a retention/resignation crisis that is unprecedented in the history of the force.
And a few million thrown at police stations in Dublin city centre to enable them to work more effectively is like putting up an umbrella in a hurricane.
Last April, garda strength dipped to 13,997, down from 14,347 the previous year.
It’s obvious that Gardaí should be better paid, better equipped and empowered to do their jobs right. That they have improved pensions. That they be provided with much improved working conditions. That they should be allowed to do their job.
Of course there should be oversight, but not the kind that stands police officers down from chasing criminals, makes it nigh-on impossible for them to do their work, and forces them to spend hours completing mountains of paperwork.
People joined the force to police, not, as a GRA official said, to spend their time pen-pushing.
So, yes, thanks to government inaction, crass stupidity, lack of funding, and mountains of red tape, time is on the side of criminals.
In Dublin, all they have to do is wait ’til the new overtime money runs out.
And what of the rest of the country, where you never see a garda anymore?
What’s being done about the lack of garda visibility and the need for gardaí at street-level dealing with anti-social behaviour, and open drug dealing in the increasingly dilapidated cities of Cork, Galway, Limerick, and in towns like Mallow, Midleton or Clonakilty?
How many more U.S tourists like Stephen Termini will have to be put into a coma by a gang of vicious thugs before effective law-enforcement returns wholesale to this state?
App?
