We're being shot at by thugs but there's no money to tackle crime
Ordinary people are witnessing the rule of law collapse on their doorstep. Carol Hunt is one of them
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The morning after the Fairview shootings, my daughter's little friend arrived goggle-eyed at our front door.
"The street is full of police because some bad man was killing people last night," she said breathlessly. "One garda searched through my bicycle basket -- for guns, I think -- and said we had to go around the other way to get to you."
Her babysitter, who accompanied her charge on the short walk to our house, insisted that she had been woken up the previous night by sounds of gunfire and people screaming.
Within minutes these messengers of doom are surrounded by my fascinated kids, agog at the news that they seem to be living in a modern day Wild West where innocent life is cheap.
(The previous night, a man wearing a balaclava and brandishing two handguns had shot three people in the very popular sports bar, the Players Lounge, in nearby Fairview. One of the injured was the cousin of a neighbour.)
"Is it dangerous to go out?" one kid wants to know.
"Did the police get the man who did it?" asks the other.
So much for my other half's advice to me to keep the news from the children, in case they may be terrified to hear that armed thugs are randomly shooting their neighbours.
Unfortunately, though, they seem to be getting used to the idea that walking the streets of their locality means running the risk of being hit upon by marauding thugs.
A few months ago, after I had been mugged in front of my children in broad daylight -- not five minutes from our front door -- the local garda had a "serious" chat with them, telling them that there was no need to be frightened, that crime on the streets was rare and that the guards were always there for them if they were in trouble.
"But there seem to be lots of crimes in this area," noted my daughter after he had left. "Remember the man with the gun?"
Yes, I remember.
Last August, a gunman, a relative of a well-known criminal, was arrested by armed detectives on our narrow quiet street. He was supposedly headed for a local pub. Seeing your street on the Six-One News in connection with gun crime doesn't do much for the resale value of your home.
"And the men who tried to rob the bank," she added.
"Post Office," I corrected her. "And they didn't manage to rob it."
She is talking about an incident in 2007 when a very young Traffic Corps garda stopped two men in a car, one of them armed, who were thought to be heading to our local post office.
"But they shot the policeman," she said. "He had no gun, but they did and they nearly killed him."
Sometimes I wish my daughter didn't have such a prodigious memory. After chatting with me about the well-above-average incidents of gun crime in our locality, she then went off to regale her friends with the news that yet more innocent people had been shot at by armed thugs.
Some hours later, my mother is on the phone insisting that I up sticks and move to a place where "innocent people don't get mown down by gunmen" just because they're enjoying a pint in their local. I argue that it could happen anywhere -- which it could.
"But it doesn't," she says.
She's right. It doesn't.
"So why is it allowed to happen here?" asks a furious and terrified neighbour when we chat about it later. "We're all taxpayers the same as people in Foxrock or Howth, aren't we?"
"But you can be damn sure that if innocent people were shot in those constituencies, there'd be national outrage," says another. "For some reason people seem to think that if you live in some areas of Dublin or Limerick or wherever, a certain amount of crime is acceptable; that we're just supposed to put up with it on behalf of our 'betters' elsewhere."
All my neighbours are disgusted at the random way an innocent person out for a night can become the victim of criminal gangs.
"My first thought," says a good friend who lives beside the Players Lounge, "was that it could have been me or one of my family. We often go there. Who's Eddie were playing that night -- and they're a really popular group. It was also full of people up from the country after the match in Croker -- there was a huge mix of people, and it's so scary to think that you could be just sitting there having a drink, and be shot for nothing!"
She continued: "There's no leadership in this Government at all. They haven't even made a dint in the gangland and shooting crimes, and local TD Bertie Ahern has been particularly silent on this one. Whatever happened to zero tolerance?"
Local community worker Patrick Gates is also furious, commenting: "Even now, when many communities are under huge social and economic stress with unemployment, increase in gun crime and drug use, this Government is dismantling the community-based services that have worked for many years to maintain a supportive social fabric that could respond to the vulnerabilities of individuals, families and communities."
Nope, there's no money to tackle gun crime or prevent innocent people getting shot at of a Sunday night, but there seem to be endless billions available to pour into the banks.
"We're getting shot at by the thugs in the streets," says one local.
"Meanwhile, we're being robbed by the politicians to pay for the crooks in the banks and building societies. Is there anybody in charge of running this country at all?"
It's hard to describe the sheer terror and frustration experienced by ordinary people, who just want to go about their daily business, when confronted with the breakdown of the rule of law on their doorstep.
The local gardai are doing their best, but there's only so much an unarmed copper on the beat can do -- and the criminal gangs don't give a s**t about the old code of honour of not shooting a policeman.
So is it time to arm all the gardai?
Our local councillor, Killian Forde, thinks so. "We need to examine, based on facts and international experience, the logic and benefits of the Garda remaining unarmed," he told me.
"Firearms in 1998 accounted for only eight per cent of all killings; in 2008 it was nearly 40 per cent. Clearly there's a growing problem, and yet we continue to hold on to the concept of unarmed gardai as somehow appropriate and 'obviously' sensible.
"I think the ongoing policy has become a sacred cow in Irish public policy, and a lack of debate and a refusal to seriously examine the current approach is doing a great disservice to the citizens of this city -- citizens who get caught up in the lurid 'gangsta' fantasies of violent young men.
If these same men believed that they might encounter better armed, trained and disciplined gardai when carrying out their crimes, they might well think twice about their plans."
He has a point. My children don't understand why the criminals who seem to haunt their locality can carry guns to their hearts' content, while the rank and file gardai who are supposed to be protecting us from these thugs can't.
My six-year-old has taken to carrying his yellow, plastic, Nerf gun with him every time he leaves the house, "just in case".
This is heartbreaking. It is unacceptable. It is daily life in a neighbourhood near you.
Originally published in
