Month: August 2022

I read a story recently about Jesse James, a criminal in the Wild West era of the 1800’s. A couple of weeks later, I read a story about the less well-known Frank Serpico, who was a police detective with the NYPD in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Two completely different characters who lived their lives on opposite sides of the law, but they had something in common.

They lived in different times, with contrasting lifestyles, but they were both betrayed by their own people. Jesse James was shot in the back by a member of his own gang while Frank Serpico was set up by his fellow officers and left to die after being shot in the face. Serpico didn’t die though, he lived to tell the tale, a tale of a police force that was up to its eyes in corruption.

But let’s start with Jesse James. According to Biography.com, James was born in 1847 in Missouri and was only 16 years old when he and his brother Frank took the law into their own hands and began robbing trains, stagecoaches and banks. They became a feared band of outlaws, responsible for the murders of countless individuals who stood in their way and stealing an estimated $200,000 in the process.

Things took a turn for the worse in 1869, when the gang robbed a bank in Missouri and Jesse shot a teller in the heart. Local newspapers labelled the actions vicious and bloodthirsty and called for the gang’s capture. From then on, members of the James Gang had a price on their heads and were wanted dead or alive.

They were always on the move after that and had planned another robbery with the Ford brothers, Charlie and Bob, but they didn’t know that the Governor of Missouri had put a bounty on their heads so large that the Fords couldn’t resist it.

In 1882, when Jesse was at home, he went to straighten a picture on a wall and while his back was turned, Ford shot him in the back of the head. Jesse died instantly at age 34. Three months later, Frank James surrendered but the jury wouldn’t convict him on meagre evidence, so he was freed.

It was ironic that having lived such a violent lifestyle, Jesse James ended his days while doing something as mundane as straightening a picture on the wall. Ford was convicted of murder and sentenced to hang but was quickly pardoned and moved to Colorado where he opened a saloon. In 1892 Ed O’Kelley entered the saloon carrying a shotgun and shot him dead and became the “man who killed the man who killed Jesse James.”

The second guy in this story is Frank Serpico, an NYPD officer whose stand against police corruption was celebrated in the film starring Al Pacino. Now well into his eighties, he still recalls how he was appalled by the bribes he witnessed in the 1960s.

On his very first day on duty, he was introduced to the way his fellow police officers went to local cafes for their free lunch. Serpico refused to be part of it and paid for his meals. He could tell that the café owners resented the practice and he felt that police on the take lost the respect of the public. There was worse to come.

Serpico witnessed a driver giving a policeman a $35 bribe to avoid a ticket for going through a red traffic light. He refused to take half, which was meant to be his share of the money. He soon realised these were both the accepted and the expected ways for police to behave when on patrol duty.

When he became a detective, he realised that plainclothes officers had a reputation for graft and corruption which Serpico ignored until an envelope with $300 inside was thrust into his hand. He reported the matter to his captain who suggested Serpico had two options. The first was to persist with the complaint and end up face down in the East River and the second was just to forget the whole thing.

Three months after receiving the envelope, Serpico was transferred to another plainclothes group, and he soon found out it was the worst place for blatant graft and corruption he had come across.

By October 1967 Serpico’s position was becoming untenable. He was doing his job and arresting individuals for illegal gambling while they were paying his colleagues for protection. With nobody prepared to do anything, he took his story to The New York Times. They knew immediately this would become one of the biggest stories of the year.

On the night of February 3, 1971, Serpico was brought along on the arrest of a drug dealer in a Latino neighbourhood of Brooklyn because he spoke Spanish. Accompanied by a couple of backup officers, Serpico was instructed to just get the apartment door open and leave the rest to his colleagues.

But when the door was opened and Serpico rushed it, it was slammed on his shoulder and head, wedging him halfway inside. Frank Serpico called to his two backup officers for assistance, but no help came, and he was shot in the face.

Both of the backup officers fled, and it was an elderly Hispanic man who called 911 on his behalf. A single patrol car responded to the incident and the officer who responded allegedly muttered, “If I knew it was Serpico, I would have left him bleed to death.”

He barely survived and today he still doesn’t know the full story behind his shooting because an investigation was never conducted. Serpico continues as an activist, speaking out against police corruption and brutality, lecturing to students at universities and serving as a mentor to officers in situations similar to what he endured.

I didn’t hear Cllr. Tony Fitzgerald speaking on Cork 96FM’s Opinion Line recently, but the programme subsequently quoted him on Twitter as suggesting he thought it was time to review the garda programme. ‘The new programme for gardai isn’t working and while there was always a good relationship with Superintendents who were active in the community, that doesn’t exist now.’

Tony Tweeted after the show that he didn’t see the point in community gardai working until 2.00 am. when schools and community centres were closed and suggested the preventative model of policing needed change. He said he was full of praise for gardai, and always was, but the roster wasn’t working.

Cllr Fitzgeralds point was that Models of best practice were developed in the ninety’s involving community, gardai & the department of justice which gave community gardai the flexibility to work their rosters accordingly to the needs of the community and family friendly policies. Huge gains were made.

He was challenged about this on Twitter by one person who suggested that gardaí were entitled to a work/family life balance, and the current roster facilitated that.  They said “Community policing involves more than just visiting schools and community centres. Much like every other aspect of policing, community policing is a 24/7 job. The need for community gardaí to be out and about doesn’t lessen once the sun goes down!”

I would argue that the need for gardai to be out and about doesn’t diminish once the sun goes down, but the need for community gardai to be out at that hour does. There is a difference. In my time, community policing was about dedicated sections of gardai engaging with the community, developing relationships with the various voluntary and statutory agencies, educating youngsters through the school’s programme and promoting community safety initiatives.

That business occurs during daylight hours when the other stakeholders are available, but that comment demonstrates how the distinction between community policing and policing the community, has become clouded. And it’s clouded because it suits the Government narrative. They would like us to believe that everything is fine, and nothing has changed, but it has.

I was responsible for community policing in Cork in the noughties, and in my time, policing the community was about patrolling the streets, investigating crimes and attending to calls that required garda attention. Community policing had a specific focus, but that role has been diluted largely because of the new roster. The lack of resources hasn’t helped either.

It was on the cards and in 2016, I made a few predictions. I can’t take any credit for them because it didn’t require any great wisdom on my part. It was obvious to all of us involved in community policing that the consequences of the “Modernisation and Renewal Programme” and the ‘New Roster’ aligned with the lack of resources were going to signal the demise of community engagement.

The introduction of the National Model of Community Policing in 2009 which was launched by M.F.Murphy, Commissioner could have saved the day. It was a blueprint for community policing that would have given it a stand-alone status if it had been implemented but the timing was bad.

The economic crash, an embargo on recruitment, manpower shortages and the introduction of the new roster system, meant the plan was doomed from the outset. Community policing officers were regularly taken from their duties to fill gaps elsewhere and as a consequence, they were less available to the community.

The ‘Modernisation and Renewal Programme 2016-2021’ as announced by the then Garda Commissioner, Noirin O’Sullivan, promised “to enhance our model of community policing to make communities safer, and address the policing challenges of each community. We will demonstrate our new policing ethos by engaging with the community through Community Policing Fora to determine their policing requirements.”

I predicted it wouldn’t work. It sounded great, but unfortunately the resources weren’t there to support it. To have any hope of succeeding, community gardai needed to operate outside the restraints of the new roster. I wasn’t the only person to hold that view.

The Garda Inspectorate agreed and pointed out that the introduction of the roster and constraints on resources led to a reduction in the number of dedicated Community Policing Units, particularly in rural areas. The Inspectorate recommended that the roster for community gardai should be tailored specifically for them. That didn’t happen.

In October 2017, I again argued that the closure of rural garda stations, new garda roster and the lack of garda manpower were having a negative impact on country living. Both the then Garda Commissioner Nóirín O’Sullivan and the Minister for Justice Frances Fitzgerald disagreed and persuaded the nation that rural Ireland was getting a better and more efficient policing service by closing country stations and redeploying those gardai to larger centres.

In reality, those relocated gardai were consumed by the workload demands in the already understaffed centres they had been transferred to and as a consequence, they were rarely seen in the locality again. If you need evidence of that, just ask residents to identify their local community garda or to indicate when they last saw a garda walking the beat.

A later report of the Garda Inspectorate confirmed that community policing was practically non-existent in Ireland as of December 2015, and they had concerns about the resourcing levels devoted to community policing duties. They also found significant reductions in the number of members assigned to community policing and found some divisions had no dedicated community policing units at all.

It confirmed what we already knew; the new roster was, and still is, unsuitable to community engagement. Cllr. Tony Fitzgerald is actively involved at ground level in his community and he’s saying the same thing all these years later, but still, nobody seems to be listening.

I was out walking the other night in Cobh around 9pm. It was a balmy evening, and I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt and stepping it out as much as I could. I’m six foot tall and sixteen stone so it takes a bit of effort to build up a head of steam. I usually do about four miles and once I get going I do alright for a sixty-four-year-old.

As I was returning home, I saw a guy ahead of me on the footpath making a bit of a nuisance of himself, shouting at people passing by. He was very drunk, and I know this to be a fact because as I passed him, he took a step back, balanced himself carefully and looked me up and down and in a loud voice, he asked, “Are you an athlete?”

I was laughing to myself, and I suspect anyone within hearing distance was also having a chuckle. I am not now, nor was I ever, an athlete and one look at me would confirm that. I have managed to survive this life so far without having an athletic bone in my body but there was a time when my lack of athleticism got me into a spot of bother.

I was a young trainee garda in Templemore in 1980. It was known as the Garda Training Centre in those days and while classroom work took up most of our day, physical training was also part of the daily regime. Apart from the swimming, I didn’t enjoy those sessions, because running was a particular problem. I couldn’t do it. 

We used to run five-mile distances as far as I remember, and I always struggled. Walking for a bit, then running for a bit meant I was always at the rear coming back to base and even then, I was so out of breath I could hardly say my name. It’s a mystery to me how joggers can carry on a normal conversation without missing a beat.

One day I was holding up the rear as usual with a couple of similarly afflicted souls and when we arrived back at the centre, we were met by an angry training sergeant. He had a face like thunder, and he accused us of hiding somewhere outside the centre and then popping out to join the rest of the lads as they made their way back.

He had absolutely no evidence to support his claim but that didn’t seem to matter. It didn’t even make sense because if we were going to do that, it would have been more prudent for us to join the group somewhere in the middle and avoid the embarrassment of coming in last. In any event, the punishment for our non-offence was to keep running for several laps of the parade ground. A firing squad would have been more humane.

I suspect the angry sergeant may have been caught up in the story of Rosie Ruiz who was the surprise winner of the Boston Marathon around that same time in 1980. Her win was a surprise because, despite her near-world record time of 2 hours, 31 minutes, 56 seconds, no one had ever heard of her. Not only that, but no one recalled seeing her during the race.

According to History.com, Ruiz was unknown in the running world and her victory raised suspicions because it was a 25-minute improvement over her New York City Marathon time. Additionally, her winning time was then the third-fastest marathon time in history for a woman. After studying race photographs, Ruiz didn’t appear in any of them until the very end.

The second-placed woman, Jacqueline Gareau, was surprised when she was told that someone had finished two and a half minutes ahead of her and officials became suspicious when, during post-race TV interviews, Ruiz didn’t seem to know much at all about running. Ruiz, however, stoutly defended her achievement.

When two bystanders came forward and said they saw Ruiz coming out of the crowd onto the course a mile before the finish, officials began to question stewards. None of them had remembered seeing her pass any of the other checkpoints. When questioned, she suggested that officials had mistaken her for a man because of her short hair and that she‘d felt particularly energized after a hearty breakfast, which accounted for her vastly improved time.

Stewards reviewed official photographs and failed to find her anywhere along the course before the 25^th mile which made sense when they discovered she had taken the subway during that part of the race. Boston Marathon officials stripped Ruiz of her title and named Jacqueline Gareau of Canada the women’s champion and Ruiz’s time was invalidated.

In another marathon, Steve Cairns was in third place and out on his own. As he passed the 14-mile mark, he could see the two leading runners, a few minutes ahead. He knew he had little chance of catching the front-runners and with a six-minute gap to close, the rest of the field had little chance of catching him.

Cairns held on to his position and finished the race comfortably. As he crossed the finish line, he heard his fourth-place finish called over the PA. Confused, he asked a marshal to point out who was third. Cairns recognised the man immediately as Rob Sloan. Cairns had exchanged nods with him on the start line but hadn’t seen him since.

No other runners could recall him passing them on the trail either. Photographs suggested he was missing from the race and only appeared when there were just a few miles to go. Some witnesses clearly recalled seeing Sloan earlier but just not on the course. They said he had taken a bus.

I woke in the middle of the night some time ago. Nothing unusual in that because I’m a light sleeper and it doesn’t take much to wake me. This time, it was the noise of the howling gale outside that disturbed me. I was surprised because I hadn’t seen it coming. It wasn’t in the forecast and when I looked out the window, I saw the recycling bin had been upended outside the gate and was lying on its side.

Thankfully, the contents remained inside, but I could see other debris scattered around the road. A few of the tall trees were straining to defy Mother Nature but my neighbour had done a good job removing a lot of the dead wood after Storm Eunice came calling so I wasn’t too worried.

The fence at the back of the house had been flattened after that storm and had only recently been repaired so I was afraid to look in that direction in case it had met the same fate as the bin. I decided to forget about it and go back to bed. Nothing I could do about it now anyway. As it happened, it survived intact, thanks to the expertise of the builder.

There wasn’t much point lying awake listening to the house being battered but getting back to sleep wasn’t easy either. My wife has no such difficulty because she can sleep through anything, which reminds me of a story I heard a long time ago.

It’s a tale of a young man who applied for a job as a farmhand. When the farmer asked him why he should hire him, he said, “I can sleep through a storm.” This puzzled the farmer, but he liked the young man, so he took him on.

A few weeks later, the farmer and his wife were awakened in the night by a violent storm ripping through the valley. He jumped out of bed and called out for his new hired man but found him sleeping soundly in the midst of the storm and couldn’t wake him.

Annoyed, he went outside himself and quickly began to check things to see if all was secure. He found that the shutters of the farmhouse had been securely fastened and a good supply of logs had been set next to the fireplace. The farmer and his wife inspected the rest of the property and they found that all the farm tools had been placed in the storage shed, safe from the elements and the wheat bales had been bound and wrapped in tarps.

The tractor had been moved into its garage and the barn was properly locked tight. The animals were calm, had plenty of feed and all was well. The farmer then understood the meaning of the young man’s words, “I can sleep through a storm.”

Because the farmhand did his work loyally and faithfully when the skies were clear, he was prepared for any storm. So, when a storm did actually break, he was not concerned or afraid. He was satisfied when he was going to bed that everything was fine so he could sleep in peace.

Maybe if I had been more like that guy, I would have had the good sense to put the wheelie bin in a safer place when I left it outside.

American author Mitch Albom had his own interpretation of that story and he said if we tend to the things that are important in life, if we are right with those we love and behave in line with our faith, our lives will not be cursed with the aching throb of unfulfilled business. Our words will always be sincere; our embraces will be tight. We will never wallow in the agony of “I could have, or I should have. We can sleep through a storm and when it’s our time to go, our good-byes will be complete.

My father wasn’t a religious man, but he was a decent character and his advice to me was something similar. He said, “If you don’t go out of your way to cause harm to anyone, and you give a helping hand to anyone you meet along the way who needs it, you won’t go too far wrong.” I have never forgotten that.

So, it would seem that a clear conscience is the key to a good night’s sleep but what do you do if you haven’t got one? Or how can you prepare for a storm if you’re not as organised as that farmhand?  Well, you better come up with a plan because the future is looking bleak.

Gerald Fleming was a weather forecaster with RTE a few years ago and a familiar face. We took comfort from his reassuring wink but now he has some grim news. After studying long term weather trends, he reckons that change is on the way.

Climate predictions suggest that by 2050, our weather conditions will be warmer overall, especially through the winter months when there will be a noticeable decrease in frost at night. Our winters will also be wetter, our summers drier and we will have fewer winter storms. The bad news is those storms might be fewer in number, but they could be a lot stronger.

Rainfall may also become far more intense and is likely to be delivered in shorter, more vigorous bursts. Warmer summers could bring heatwaves, adding a significant mortality threat to the elderly and to many others already suffering from poor health. Heavier winter rain and swollen rivers, and the increased risks from winter flooding are probably the greatest threat that extreme weather poses to this country he says.

That’s not good news for my wheelie bin, my fence or my sleep pattern.

A private school in Bristol in the UK, named after the slave trader Edward Colston, is to change its name to ‘Collegiate’ in September. The governors decided on this alternative, after receiving hundreds of suggestions from students, parents and staff.

A statue of his was pulled down there during The Black Lives Matter (BLM) protest last year, following the murder of George Floyd in the United States. School leaders said that after the toppling of the statue, the name would “forever be associated with the enslavement and deaths of African men, women and children”.

After it was toppled by the protesters, it was daubed with paint, spat on, struck with implements, rolled through the city centre and thrown into the harbour, but in the aftermath, four Black Lives Matter activists were acquitted of causing criminal damage to it.

They admitted their part in pulling it down, but not to causing criminal damage which seemed kind of strange to me. They didn’t accept intending to damage the statue or being reckless as to whether it was damaged or not. Their acquittal prompted a debate in the UK about its criminal justice system and the case is going to its Court of Appeal.

Everyone has the right to protest peacefully but I don’t accept we can wreck the place in the process.  I’ve seen people convicted of causing criminal damage for less.

One of the four was asked what he would say to people who accused him of trying to rewrite history, he said: “We didn’t change history, they were whitewashing history by calling him a virtuous man. We didn’t change history, we rectified it.”

I don’t understand the thinking behind this to be honest. How can you rectify history? Colston was a product of his time and lived in an era when slavery was accepted by many. He didn’t invent it and trying to wipe him from history doesn’t alter that reality.

Judging past actions by today’s standards and interpreting past events in terms of modern values and concepts is just interfering with history

I recently learned the famous author, Enid Blyton, was rejected by the Royal Mint in 2016 for commemoration on a 50p coin because, the advisory committee decided she was ‘a racist, sexist, homophobe and not a very well-regarded writer.’

That was a surprise to me because I grew up reading Enid Blyton books and I never saw anything wrong with them. I was a child then so I wouldn’t have I suppose, but I have been a big reader all my life and it was her books that got me started. I followed the exploits of the Famous Five and loved their adventures. Cheesy characters by today’s standards but they were products of their time too.

To suggest that Blyton is ‘not a very well-regarded writer’ is off the mark. She wrote somewhere in the region of seven hundred books in her time and sold over six hundred million copies. She was obviously well-regarded by many and that should be acknowledged too. It’s very easy to be critical with the benefit of hindsight but many of us are reading today, and educating ourselves about these issues, because of her.

During my working life in An Garda Siochana, I was responsible for a community policing team in Cork. Part of our brief was to engage with members of the new communities in the city, and to work with State agencies, volunteer organisations and minority groups promoting integration and inclusion. We were well intentioned but if our efforts were judged by todays’ standards, many holes could be found in our strategy. We made plenty of mistakes.

It was new ground to all of us back in the noughties. Record numbers of immigrants were arriving in the city from all over the world, and we were suddenly presented with different religions, cultures, languages and customs but there was no rule book to show us how to get everyone living and working together.

We did our best and in 2011, I accepted an award on behalf of the Community Policing section from The Integration Centre in Dublin. ‘The Diverse Ireland Awards’ were organised annually, and we were recognised for the effort we were making. We didn’t get it right all the time, but at least we were trying.

I remember being mildly chastised for shaking hands with a Muslim woman. I didn’t realise it was against her religion for her to shake hands with a man but there was no offence intended and none was taken, and I learned from my mistake.

On another occasion I referred to someone as a non-national which was a term being bandied about at the time. I thought nothing of it until one man suggested the term made him uncomfortable because it suggested he had no nationality and didn’t belong anywhere. While he had left his own country for various reasons, he was nevertheless, proud of his heritage, roots and nationality. He was a ‘national’, just not an Irish one.

Fair enough. That made sense to me once it was pointed out and again there was no offence intended or taken. Most reasonable people understood we were trying our best even though, looking back on it now, we were often stumbling around in the dark, but we improved with time as did Edward Colston.

He built a school to prepare boys from ‘poor families’ for apprenticeships. He also gave money to other schools, alms-houses, hospitals and churches during his lifetime and on his death, he left the equivalent of £16 million to charity but that seems to have been conveniently forgotten.

As William Shakespeare said, “The evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones.”  Edward Colston did a lot of good work in the community, but that part of his story will remain with him in the coffin.