Month: April 2017

There has been a fair amount of criticism aimed at management in An Garda Siochana recently by the media and not without some justification. There have been allegations of nepotism, politically influenced promotions, manipulation of crime figures, incompetence and more.

It’s one thing for the media to highlight these issues. It is a different matter entirely for someone inside the organisation to speak out and we need to look no further than Maurice McCabe to see the evidence of that.

I can only speculate as to how difficult life has been for that man over the last number of years. The pressure that he has been under has been immense and it’s not over yet. I have had only a tiny taste of what can happen to someone who breaks ranks but even that little sample has been unsavoury and it tells its own tale of how deeply the code of silence is embedded in the Force.

I retired in 2015 having spent over thirty- five years in An Garda Siochana. My service was considered to have been exemplary and I have discharge papers that state that. Not long after retiring, I wrote an article about the demise of community policing and the closure of rural garda stations. I also criticised senior management for letting down the rank and file members of the Force. It was published in Journal.ie and it received 55,000 hits.

Some of my former colleagues advised me that certain senior garda officers had suggested that I could find myself in the High Court. Others had, apparently, suggested that I should be treated as a persona non grata because I had let the side down. It was nothing to cause me any loss of sleep but it was a reminder of what can happen if you violate the vow of silence or break the code of Omerta.

This is a great pity because while there are issues to be resolved within An Garda Siochana, it is basically a solid organisation with a core group of dedicated, professional men and women who just want to do their job to the best of their ability. It has a long and proud tradition of dedicated service to the community and that can only be improved upon when management face up to their inadequacies and change the way the system operates.

But that’s easier said than done. An Garda Siochana also has a long tradition of circling the wagons at the first sign of outside interference. As soon as trouble is detected on the horizon the default setting kicks in. Close ranks and stick together. It’s them against us and that mentality will be difficult to overturn.

Commissioner O’Sullivan has maintained that An Garda Siochana is going through a process of change and whistleblowing is very much encouraged in this new era of openness.

She has said that; “As Commissioner of Garda Síochána, I have consistently encouraged workers within An Garda Síochána to disclose wrongdoing. Any worker who makes such a disclosure will be fully supported. Each and every worker has the right and responsibility to raise their concerns, if necessary, in confidence, and be confident that those concerns will be listened to and addressed. An Garda Síochána is committed to promoting integrity, accountability, and good management and in that respect I encourage the reporting of wrongdoing.” 

That sounds well but the problem is that very few believe her. She has stated that fewer than ten people have come forward to make protected disclosures and that doesn’t surprise me in the least. I suspect that there are very few who have any confidence in statements that emanate from the Phoenix Park and I’ll tell you why.

A few years ago, An Garda Siochana held a National Consultation Day on Diversity in Dublin Castle. Diversity was the buzz word in the organisation at the time and this event was designed to engage with the community and to listen to their concerns in relation to diversity and to inform them about garda policy on the subject. It was attended by the public and by representatives of various organisations involved in that area.

I was involved in an EU Police Diversity Project at the time and there was a meeting of the project group held in Ireland that week so it could coincide with the consultation day. There were about 25 to 30 police officers from all over Europe involved.

The Commissioner at the time opened proceedings and made a passionate speech about the importance of diversity to An Garda Siochana and the importance of engaging with one another. He ensured everyone present that diversity was the way forward and An Garda Siochana would not be found wanting.

Later that evening the project group went to Farmleigh House for a meal. As we entered the room I went to one table and sat with a group of police officers from different jurisdictions and one of my colleagues went to another table and did the same.

Soon after, the Commissioner arrived and he sat at a table in a corner of the room and he was joined by an assistant commissioner, a chief superintendent, a superintendent, an inspector, a sergeant and a garda.  The full rank structure of An Garda Siochana was represented at one table, on an occasion when we were supposed to be demonstrating our new found love of diversity.

I sat next to a man who was the secretary of the Black Police Officers Federation in the UK. He leaned over to me and he pointed to that table and he said; “See that, nothing changes until that changes.”

He was right of course and it was embarrassing, and it was also a perfect example of how management in An Garda Siochana doesn’t always practice what it preaches.

Many years ago, the early nineteen eighties to be precise, I was a young garda stationed in Blackrock in Dublin and back then Dublin was a different place to what it is now. The equipment and even the clothing we had in those days was nothing like what is available to the guys today.

We had overcoats, greatcoats they were called, made from bulls’ wool. They weighed a ton when they were dry and could bring you to your knees when they were wet.  It felt as if you were carrying a large dead hairy animal around on your shoulders. The trousers were made from the same material and comfort was never a consideration for the manufacturers.

The rain coats we had were very flimsy and uncomfortable, and they did everything except keep out the rain. The hand- held radios we used were very basic with a little dial on the front that allowed you to switch to channel one or channel two. They were in short supply and there never seemed to be enough of them.

We always had a briefing from the sergeant at the start of a tour of duty and I remember during one of those briefings I had been detailed to carry out a foot patrol in the area of the Stillorgan Shopping Centre.

I discovered to my horror that there was no radio left for me. I explained my predicament to the sergeant expecting him to be sympathetic and to somehow use his experience and wisdom to produce a fresh radio for me. He used to smoke a pipe and he looked at me over the top of the pipe while he puffed away; “Stick close to a phone box,” he said.

For some of my time there, I performed duty in plain clothes because I carried a firearm. This was for the protection of the Turkish Ambassador who lived in the penthouse suite in a block of apartments in Mount Merrion Avenue in Blackrock. I had very little service at that stage so I was fairly green.

The gun was a Smith and Wesson 38 revolver and my job was to protect the Ambassador once he arrived home in the evening. Turkish officials were considered a high risk target in those days due to the fact that there was an aggressive campaign being raged by the Armenians. I had to make sure that the building was secure for him when he came home from work and make sure that he was not assassinated while he was in the building.

There was a table and chair on the landing at the top of the stairs outside his front door and that was where I would make camp.

The Ambassador himself was a lovely man who lived on his own. He was a friendly type of character who would regularly appear on the landing at some point during the night with a half finished crossword that he wanted a hand with. He would often bring me a plate of toast, syrup and olives. He never seemed to sleep too much and I often wondered what it was that kept him awake.

His staff lived on the floor below and consisted of a chef, two bodyguards, a cleaner, a waiter and a secretary. There were all nice people and I developed a relationship with them over the year I was performing that duty.

One of the body guards was a big guy with a square bald head, a big moustache and a body that made Arnold Scwartznegger look anorexic. His arms were like tree trunks.  The guy was huge. He didn’t have a word of English but had a big smile and could make himself understood with gestures. His party piece was lifting the chef up in the air with one hand, much to the annoyance of the chef.

One night, actually it was in the early hours of the morning, I was sitting in my perch minding my own business when, unknown to me, the big body guard was sneaking up the stairs beneath me. He had a brown paper bag which he had inflated. He crept to a spot where he was only a couple of feet away from me and then burst the bag by clapping his hands together. At that hour of the night and in a confined space, the noise was enormous. He collapsed in laughter.

I half fell and half jumped out of the chair with fright and had absolutely no idea what my next move was going to be. If I had been a Clint Eastwood character from the film ‘In the Line of Fire’ I probably would have shot him between the eyes or if I had been a highly trained secret service agent I might have kicked the bag out of his hand and disabled him with a strategic chop to the neck.

As it happened I was neither so he was perfectly safe. The reality was that by the time I would have wrestled my gun from its holster, loaded it with bullets (I generally kept it unloaded) and pointed it in the right direction, the would be assassin would have fled the scene and the victim would have been on a plane to Turkey for a state funeral.

And it was then that it dawned on me. The Ambassador knew all the time. He knew who he was dealing with. Somebody must have told him.  Or maybe he just figured it out for himself but, in any event, he knew that he was not in safe hands. That’s why he didn’t sleep. That’s why I got crosswords and toast – he was AFRAID!

To be perfectly honest if I had been protecting myself in those days I probably wouldn’t have slept much either.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Addiction counsellors have warned that there could be a surge in the number of women presenting at their clinics with gambling problems. According to the Rutland Centre, betting firms are trying to attract more women to spend money.

While traditionally, women were more inclined to gamble on scratch cards or slot machines, there is an increase in gambling apps and markets that were usually geared towards men are now being painted pink in a bid to lure females into the multi-billion euro industry.

I think I’m fortunate not to have any interest in gambling. I never did have. When I was growing up there was a bookie in the town and to me it was a smoke-filled room where people stood around all day watching horses running around in circles. I always associated the place with misery but maybe that’s unfair given that my own experience with gambling is very limited. I have played card games for small money and I have occasionally backed a horse in the Grand National but that probably doesn’t count.

When I worked in Dublin as a young man, I sometimes went to Leopardstown Racecourse for a day out with the lads but the racing never did anything for me.  We used to spend a few bob and have a few beers but that was it. Horse racing and Formula 1 motor sport just make me want to contemplate the inside of my eyelids. But I understand there are others who get great enjoyment out of spending some time trying to win a few Euro and there’s nothing wrong with that as long as it is under control.

The gambling scene has changed dramatically over the years and now there are betting offices all over the place. Their image has been completely transformed from smoke filled dens on inequity to spaces that are clean and comfortable. If the betting office still doesn’t appeal to the budding punter, there are other options with online gambling.

You can now gamble yourself silly from the comfort of your own armchair and that’s the thing that worries me. Gambling anonymously in the privacy of your own home can create all sorts of difficulties for those people who have addictive personalities. As betting moves out of the bookies’ and on to the mobile phone, a new kind of danger is emerging.

According to a recent article in the Irish Examiner, Sports Minister Patrick O’Donovan has called on the FAI, IRFU, and Olympic Council of Ireland to draw up concrete proposals as he warned of a gambling epidemic among GAA stars which is spreading to other sports. In recent months a series of high-profile cases involving GAA and soccer players has brought attention to the issue of drugs and gambling addiction. In some cases, players are facing debts of more than €80,000, with others struggling to cope with crippling financial problems.

One footballer has revealed that he became “suicidal” after fighting “compulsive” gambling for 16 years and another said his 12-month ban for cocaine use was due to an obsession with online gambling. Former GPA chairman Dessie Farrell earlier revealed that the organisation helped 74 GAA players with hidden gambling problems in 2015.

A survey of the UK industry by three academics, Mark Griffiths, Jim Orford and Heather Wardle found that 30-35 per cent of the industry’s revenue comes from full-blown problem gamblers. That’s very significant. The Australian Productivity Commission, which undertook the biggest research exercise there’s ever been on gambling, came up with similar figures for Australia.

It’s enough to make your head spin when you hear about the debts that problem gamblers can run up. Aiséirí is a network of addiction-treatment centres in Ireland, treating disorders including drug, alcohol and gambling problems. Debts of problem gamblers at its centres in 2011-13 ranged from €20,000 to €500,000. This kind of debt can cause serious damage to mental health, to families and to businesses.

Gambling is a big business. The European market is estimated to be worth €80 billion a year, but it is undergoing rapid change. Gavin Kelleher of Goodbody Stockbrokers estimates the gross revenue from gambling in Ireland as about €1.1 billion a year. That figure is made up of €314 million from land-based betting and €310 million from lotteries – two figures he can be “pretty confident of” with €8 million coming from bingo, €130 million coming from gaming machines and €65 million coming from casinos or private members’ clubs.

The online market, Kelleher says, is difficult to quantify, but he estimates it is worth €220 million. The traditional, land-based bookmaking market is shrinking. In 2008 there were 1,365 betting shops while there are 948 today. Sharon Byrne of the Irish Bookmakers Association believes more will disappear as more gamblers seem to be migrating online.

Dr Colin O’Gara, a consultant psychiatrist, has seen a dramatic increase in the number of patients with smartphone and other online-gambling problems. Gambling is a hobby for some people, but for others it’s an inherently addictive behaviour just like alcohol or drugs. A pathological gambler looks at things in a totally different way to ordinary people. They feel they’re going to win all the time so when they have had a series of losses they can justify that by convincing themselves that a win is just around the next corner.

Strange as it may seem, one of the most effective anti-problem-gambling measures worldwide has been the smoking ban. It seems that when people leave the bookmaker’s or the casino to go out for a smoke, the spell is broken. Because of this, many campaigners advocate more formally enforced “time outs” for gamblers to stop them simply rolling from one bet to the next.

I think that’s the first time I heard that smoking could have some positive health effects.

 

 

 

I came across an old story the other day about a woman who went missing from Kildare on December 22^nd 1979.  She had been doing her Christmas shopping in Newbridge that day and she was last seen going to a bus stop at about 6.30 p.m. She had bought presents for her brother’s children and she was planning to spend Christmas with her family in Kildare.  

 Unfortunately for her, she never got there and her body was later found in the Wicklow Gap. Her name was Phyllis Murphy and she was only 23 years of age. She had been raped and strangled. Throughout the Christmas and beyond, search teams combed the town and the surrounding countryside along the flat Curragh plains. Her disappearance captured the attention of the nation.

 This is a very tragic story but it is one that I have more than a passing interest in because I was involved in the search for her back then. Not only that, but I saw her body lying in the snow. It is something that I have never forgotten even though I have seen many bodies since then.

The sight of Phyllis lying there was something that sent shock waves through many young men who were there that day. We had come from the Garda Training Centre in Templemore and for most of us, it was the first time we had seen someone who had died as a result of a violent act and it was not nice.

I started my training in Templemore just a few weeks earlier, on the 5^th December 1979, along with 97 other guys. We came from all corners of the country and from a variety of backgrounds and we were all young and impressionable. We had barely started our training when we broke for the Christmas holidays.

But Christmas was barely over when we all received a message to get back to Templemore. We weren’t told why. It was bitterly cold at the time and there was snow in the mountains. We were herded into buses and it was then we were told that we were going to the Curragh and we would be working with the army in the search for Phyllis Murphy.

Looking back on it now, I realise that we were totally ill equipped for a job like this. Our clothing was nothing like it is now and all we had to protect us from the elements was a pair of wellington boots and a rain coat that seemed to be made from the same material as the wellies. It did nothing to keep out the cold and it didn’t keep out the rain either and the material made you sweat.

For lunch, we were given sandwiches in a plastic wrapper and a pint of milk. Given that we were working in sub- zero conditions these provisions did nothing to lift our mood. The soldiers on the other hand had hot food and were much better prepared.

These issues became insignificant the day that the body of Phyllis was discovered. I’m not going to go into the details of the discovery but the atmosphere changed for everyone that day. The bus journey back to the Training Centre that evening was subdued and there was very little chatter. None of us knew her personally but we still felt a sense of loss and we wanted the killer caught. But the investigation was going nowhere.

Forensic science techniques at that time were way behind todays’ standards but somebody, back then, made the decision to put the samples into storage. They were kept in the Garda Technical Bureau until 1998.

Operation Trace was launched in 1998 and the samples were sent for analysis to a British laboratory. The results pointed to one man, John Crerar. Then aged 51, he was a former Army sergeant and worked as a security guard in Kildare town. At the time of Murphy’s disappearance, he drove a Datsun car. This was the same make sought by gardaí after a witness reported seeing it near the place where her body was discovered.

John Crerar was charged with the murder of Phyllis Murphy in July 1999 and in 2002, almost 23 years after she was killed, the trial for her murder opened in the Central Criminal Court. Crerar, a father of five from Kildare, pleaded not guilty. He contradicted evidence given by witnesses on several issues and denied he knew her. Ms Murphy’s sister told the court that she, Phyllis and another sister used to baby-sit for the Crerars.

Nearly a quarter of a century after he raped and battered Phyllis Murphy to death, former Army sergeant and father-of-five John Crerar was convicted of her murder and received the mandatory life sentence without leave to appeal. Outside the courtroom, the man who arrested Crerar in 1999, retired detective garda Mark Carroll, and the detective who ran the case against him, detective garda Pat Donlon, shared hugs and tears with the Murphy family.

There were 98 other guys who also silently congratulated those policemen who finally got justice for Phyllis Murphy, the girl we saw lying in the snow so many years before.

As a little aside to this story, I was in Templemore a few years back to attend a funeral. I was in a huddle with a few people after the burial and we were talking about how cold it was. I remarked how back in 1980, as a fresh- faced recruit in Templemore, I was searching for the body of Phyllis Murphy in what was one of the coldest periods in my memory.

I didn’t know it, but one of those in the group was a relative of Phyllis. A friend introduced me to Michael, her brother and we shook hands. There was no need to say anything.

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