The Garda: 'I never thought this job wasn't for me'
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Thursday September 02 2010
Garda Sergeant Trevor Laffan joined the Garda Siochana in 1979. He is now Sergeant in charge of Community Policing at Anglesea Street station in Cork City.
"When I trained, it was six months at Templemore and then a two-year probation that was like an apprenticeship. Back then, we used to go out on the beat on our own and you didn't have any great fear.
"Our communication system was archaic enough: we didn't have enough radios to go round. I remember one time telling this to the sergeant and he told me to 'stick near a phone box'.
"We are still very lucky as a police force because we have the general support of the community. But there wouldn't be the same regard for the uniform as there was. Serious criminality has taken violence to an extreme level with firearms involved, but even on the street the nature of violence has changed.
"At one time, a simple argument between two guys would end with a punch and one guy going to the ground.
"Now you'll have three guys kicking him until his head is twice the size it was. I don't know whether it's to do with what people see in movies or video games, or the rise in drug culture, but there seems to be less regard for the consequences.
"In a way, my role as sergeant of community policing is to try to bring the role of the garda to what it was 30 years ago, where you could identify your local guard and he knew you. Over the years, as cities got busier, we tended to lose that contact.
"Community policing has now got a national model and there are resources being put into it. Commissioner Fachtna Murphy launched it last year. No one agency can solve all the ills of society, so we work closely with the health service, with local councils, with support groups for immigrants and so on. It's a holistic approach.
"I don't ever remember thinking this job wasn't for me. It's the ordinary, mundane encounters you remember. There was a family one time in which the father left home coming up to Christmas, leaving the mother and three kids. The mother had a nervous breakdown.
"Between the district nurse, myself and the St Vincent de Paul, we called up to the house and kept the show on the road, so to speak. We organised Santa and Christmas dinner for the kids in the house and they were looked after until the mum came back out of hospital.
"Years later, that woman came into the station looking for a passport for the youngest child and I didn't recognise her until she introduced me to the child.
"She said, 'You have no idea what you did for my family'."
- Susan Daly
Irish Independent
