NOW that we are trying to make everything 'fit for purpose', so to speak, on the back of our recent economic and -- let's face it -- national crisis, isn't it time we looked at the our police force, especially in light of recent controversies about street crime, drug use and anti-social behaviour.
We have rightly been running the ruler over national institutions and regulatory bodies and trying to make them efficient, modern, robust and value for money, so maybe it's time we did the same with the gardai.
Our police force -- utterly professional and unarmed, even in the face of an armed conflict up North -- is a tremendous asset, with an impressive track record in terms of the detection of serious crime, fraud and with an intimate engagement with local community life.
However, times are changing, society is fracturing and sometimes you wonder if the garda approach is falling behind. Maybe the 'one-size-fits-all' type of policing -- the occasional walkabout, the occasional squad-car cruise, and the retreat to the station -- is just not working any more, not in the face of the type of day-long, night-long, open anti-social behaviour that you see all over central Dublin and in our other towns at nightfall.
Maybe we do need, for example, more than half of garda stations to have internet access -- an incredible statistic which illustrates more than anything the genial, old-fashioned way of doing things at the moment ("Sure, you'll know where to find us, missus"). Maybe we do need a more selective and conspicuous approach, as well as more gardai undercover and more surveillance.
Last week, on Pat Kenny's radio show, Senator Marie Louise O'Donnell made some very good points about it all.
She did a long walkabout around the capital's quays and tourist areas -- most notably the O'Connell Street area -- where she witnessed the vomiting young drunks, the open use and sale of drugs and the aftermath of violence and handbag snatches. And she felt that the city's gardai were just not up to it -- either unwilling to tackle the open drug-selling and people out of their heads in public or just unable.
She made the point that even as a physical presence, the gardai seem to offer no deterrent. They are just not around often enough and not forceful enough. Indeed, the gardai are not even physically as big as they used to be.
I have found this even in relation to a more routine police presence -- or lack of it. Why, for example are there never any gardai to be seen on O'Connell Street, or College Green, at rush hour when the traffic is all backed up and chaotic and when their very presence is required as a calming influence and a deterrent.
This should be peak time for the gardai, but instead it is apparently their change of shift and they're just not to be seen. Do you know any other European capital where this happens?
But maybe the gardai are old-style in their entire approach. With all due respect, our police force is still a bottom-up, Buggins's Turn institution in terms of management and promotion and the way it is run.
There is very little specialist recruitment or even graduate recruitment. They are old-style and when it comes to dealing with street behaviour, and drugs -- detection but most of all prevention -- they seem to be way behind the sophisticated but robust and zero-tolerant approach of other European forces.
Likewise, on minor offences. For example, how often do you see the gardai bust someone for using their phone while driving? Ever?
In fairness, our gardai also now have to face the serious prospect of getting attacked. Our drunken or drugged belligerents are well up to it. And yet in dealing with this, their hands are metaphorically tied.
With a number of gardai recently disciplined and worse for dealing harshly with members of the public, they are understandably reluctant to deal too robustly with aggressive suspects on behalf of the public. They could end up spending six months dealing with a complaint, being disciplined, losing their job or even facing jail.
They see, after all, a legal system that would pursue such 'excesses' vigorously and put the gardai on the back foot, egged on by a chorus of quangos and liberal-media types who, for some strange reason, enjoy nothing more than nailing cops.
The same legal system, incidentally, which seems to mollycoddle some actual violent offenders via early release or bail or on the basis of their 'troubled and misunderstood backgrounds'. Or because our prison system is overcrowded.
But we have to go back to the very top. The day after Marie Louise O'Donnell's observations, former Garda Assistant Commissioner Martin Donnellan responded on Pat Kenny's radio show and he did not inspire confidence.
Granted, he is right that the whole crime issue is distorted by the drugs scourge, which should be treated, in a sense, as a health issue, and that there should be methadone clinics outside the city centre and away from tourist areas. And it's true, that gardai shouldn't have to deal with a culture of such toxic addiction on their own.
"Sure, we're just sheepdogs," a young garda told me on Marlborough Street in Dublin, referring to the zombie-like junkies, "we're only moving them on."
But Donnellan's other points were too much like the same old excuses, such as that we need more gardai, fewer cuts and to keep the rural garda stations open. Kenny reminded him that they were talking about the city and urban centres. Unfortunately, Donnellan sounded like your old-style tough but genial garda from another age. It took an email sent in by an actual working garda to cut through the patter.
"The garda on the beat is regarded (from within) as the lowest form of life. The mentality is to get out of uniform, and off the beat," he said.
(Might this explain why gardai out on the beat are always the younger ones?)
"There is no leadership in the force," continued the email, "and one-third of the force is carrying the other two thirds."
Touche.
It sounded like all the worst habits of the public sector and a worthy but sluggish police force which, in 2012, in an increasingly violent and socially fractious society, is not fit and lean, is too subject to union practices and is definitely not 'fit for purpose'.
